‘Freaky Tales' Review: In the Footsteps of ‘Pulp Fiction'

Wall Street Journal

03-04-2025

The feature-length anthology 'Freaky Tales' is joyfully anchored in a specific time and place: It's 1987 Oakland, Calif., where we're told there's a cosmic green glow that infuses everything with a mystical power. There is indeed a recognizable vibe to the film, but it is derived from a somewhat more mundane force: the oeuvre of Quentin Tarantino.
Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, who made soulful indies ('Half Nelson,' 'It's Kind of a Funny Story') before they took a detour into franchise filmmaking with the billion-dollar earner 'Captain Marvel,' have returned to their roots after a six-year absence from cinemas. They serve as both writers and directors of this 'Pulp Fiction'-style four-chapter tale that finally coheres with a thumper of a final act that is awash in righteous gore served up with an arch sensibility.
That conclusion both supplies an alternative fantasy ending to a highly publicized real-life occurrence (à la 'Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood') and centers on a vengeance-minded figure with an East Asian outlook dispatching baddies with a sword while wearing a snazzy tracksuit like the Bride in 'Kill Bill.' Mr. Fleck (who grew up in Oakland and neighboring Berkeley) and Ms. Boden might have been credited with some inventiveness if they had dug up a more obscure artist to whom to pay homage, but given Mr. Tarantino's status as perhaps the single most imitated filmmaker of his generation, 'Freaky Tales' can hardly avoid being stamped as derivative.
Which is not to say it isn't fun, at least intermittently. Did you know the guy who was in 'Splash' used to sell hot dogs at Oakland A's games? Characters keep bringing this up, sometimes referring to the actor in question as the guy from 'Bachelor Party' or 'The Money Pit.' Though these are perhaps not the three projects he is today most proud of, Tom Hanks is ever the good sport, and obligingly appears in the film. He plays Hank, the impressively, and annoyingly, well-informed owner of a video store. From the checkout counter he slings unsolicited film commentary along with VHS rentals (and is hence yet another reminder of Mr. Tarantino, famously a chatty video-store clerk around the same time).
Mr. Hanks joins a sprawling cast of characters who wander in and out of each other's stories in the four chapters, which strike different tones as if alluding to different types of '80s movies. In the first, a multicultural group of youngsters led by Tina (Ji-young Yoo) and Lucid (Jack Champion) who dance at the Berkeley punk club 924 Gilman Street take up arms against a gang of skinhead thugs who have been terrorizing them. In chapter two, a pair of aspiring hip-hop singers, Barbie (Dominique Thorne) and Entice (Normani), are invited to perform at a club where they get into a comical rap battle with an established, real-life master of the form, Too Short (DeMario Symba Driver). The artist, an early avatar of West Coast hip-hop, also narrates the film and has a cameo as a cop; his 1987 track 'Freaky Tales' gave the movie its title. In the third section, a disillusioned loan-shark enforcer, Clint (Pedro Pascal), tries to exit the game after losing his pregnant wife. In the climactic fourth act, the corrupt cop (Ben Mendelsohn) for whom Clint works organizes a string of robberies at the homes of Golden State Warriors players while they're participating in a playoff game against the Los Angeles Lakers.
Stretching across all of the segments is much excited discussion of 'Psytopics,' a New Age psychological inquiry, or self-improvement method, or cult that sounds a bit woo-woo in the California way but turns out to be highly useful in a crisis. One of its practitioners is the movie's hero, real-life basketball star Eric 'Sleepy' Floyd (Jay Ellis), who has a record-setting night on the court and (at least in the movie) an even more memorable one away from it.
That over-the-top climax, despite its borrowed elements, partially redeems 'Freaky Tales,' which until then follows a zigzag path that is paved with clichés. Unlike Mr. Tarantino, who has few peers when it comes to dialogue and characterization, Mr. Fleck and Ms. Boden fail to keep the narrative energy consistently high. Still, with its love for trashy genre conventions and its referential humor ('The Shining' and 'Scanners' are among the non-Tarantino features that earn an amusing shout-out), 'Freaky Tales' contains a bit more mojo than the average indie.