2024 Sundance Film Festival Movie Review: Freaky Tales

Freaky Tales is like Quentin Tarantino made a movie about the Bay Area. This is a non-linear, interconnecting story about several lives in a revisionist version of the Bay Area 1987 that is full of life, attitude, and interesting filmmaking.

Following Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, a movie that shook the cinematic landscape back in the mid-90s, there was a wave of filmmakers trying to create the next Pulp Fiction. It felt like every year for a decade we got a movie with interconnected stories, unique, pop culture-heavy dialog, and sporadic scenes of shocking violence. Despite countless efforts by many filmmakers, no film came close to replicating Pulp Fiction’s originality and lighting-in-a-bottle moment. This kind of film became less and less popular in the film landscape.

Freaky Tales reminded me of those movies trying to be Pulp Fiction. Directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Bowden made a Bay Area anthology movie set in 1987 in Oakland that is broken down into four chapters that ultimately connect in some way by the end of the film. The first story looks at a group of teen punks who defend their hangout from a gang of Nazis. The second story finds an up-and-coming female rap duo (Dominique Thorne and Normani) who battle rap against Bay Area legend Too $hort (Symba). The third story is about a mob enforcer (Pedro Pascal) who wants to leave his profession following a recent tragedy but, of course, must complete one last job. The final story is about Golden State Warrior player Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis) exacting revenge following a botched robbery at his home during a game. The stories connect by having different characters appear in multiple stories, and there is a supernatural aspect of “cosmic green shit” that has taken over the city that can be seen throughout every story, something Fleck and Bodin associate with a special energy that was happening in Oakland at that time.

Freaky Tales, whose title is a reference to rapper Too $hort’s hit song of the same name (the song’s beat plays over every chapter change), is a movie rooted in the Bay Area and I imagine anyone who lives or has lived in the area, especially during the late 1980s, will find an additional appreciation for the film’s lingo, vibes, locations, and the events that take place. It features cameos from the real-life Too $hort and Sleepy Floyd, along with Bay Area legends Marshawn Lynch and a surprise cameo from an Oscar-winning actor with ties to the area. The film goes the revisionist route for events that take place during the film (especially during the last story), but that makes the film more fun and interesting. The film’s look feels like it was ripped right out of the 80s, with a gritty texture, authentic settings, and even cigarette burns on the top right corner of the screen indicating the film reel needs to be changed, though I doubt the film had any film reels that needed to be changed.

The stories themselves, however, feel like a collage of short films put into one movie. One of the things that makes a great anthology movie is that despite the stories being shortened into one film, you want to see these stories fleshed out into individual feature films because of the characters, story, or a combination of both. This set of films all fit nicely and have short bursts of cinematic energy. All the stories are structured nicely, giving us interesting characters that are developed a little bit but not enough to make me intrigued to see more of them, and all tie up nicely. If there was one chapter I would like to see expanded it would be the third story featuring Pedro Pascal as a mob enforcer, but this has more to do with Pascal as an actor and his performance in the film than the character he plays.

Freaky Tales is loaded with humor, drama, violence, a stellar ensemble, and Bay Area vibes. Fleck and Bowden passionately and creatively made a film that is a love letter to the Bay Area while also being a sci-fi, action-packed anthology tale of revenge and redemption.

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