Ben Cahlamer
Well, color me surprised by the trailer for Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s Freaky Tales.
Freaky Tales’ cast includes Pedro Pascal (Gladiator II) and Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One), an immediate plus for the film. What struck me was the trailer’s callbacks to classic Walter Hill, namely The Driver and The Warriors. The depiction of Pascal’s character being a loner is a dead ringer for The Driver.
Boden and Fleck (Mississippi Grind, which I love) set Freaky Tales against real-world events in late 1980s Oakland as rival factions intersect with Pascal’s character arc creating a gritty reality, a la The Warriors, while Mendelsohn’s character is waiting to trap him, again an obvious reference to Walter Hill.
These are all strengths in the action column for Freaky Tales, and the comedy plays well in the trailer, but something feels unnatural about the movie. I get the feeling that Boden and Fleck are also channeling their inner Michael Mann, a la Thief. There’s a cleverness that feels forced within the trailer and will remain unresolved within the story.
Freaky Tales’ trailer has kinetic energy, though it feels like that energy doesn’t hold. Time will tell. Neither Hill nor Mann focused their films on comedy. They were more action-drama in their studies, and although the comedic moments in the trailer balance nicely with the action hype, alarm bells are going off in the back of my head that are already causing my eyes to roll back.
I make it a policy that, unless I am truly excited for an upcoming release, I don’t watch trailers. I’d rather go into a movie not knowing its style or intent. Cutting styles are more akin to blowing up the chatter on the social media sphere than they are in selling the merits of a film. It isn’t a dig on cutting styles because we all have to follow the money.
I want to be surprised by a movie’s story or characters. Trailers tend to give too much away, though, in Freaky Tales’ case, the trailer’s intrigue appears to be what it isn’t saying, and if I am pleasantly surprised when Freaky Tales releases on April 4th in theaters, I’ll owe it to this trailer for captivating my attention.
Directed and written by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck and starring Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn, Jay Ellis, and singer Normani in her film debut, Freaky Tales will be in theaters on April 4, 2025.
