Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s latest movie, Freaky Tales, doesn’t have much of a point apart from ruling incredibly hard. For some, that may be more of a bug than a feature, especially when one goes into an anthology film expecting each segment to tell a cohesive story with characters to latch onto, even if each short story is distinct. While each segment eventually coalesces together and smartly interweaves many individual characters into an overarching narrative, the film itself doesn’t have much to tell. Instead, it acts as an excuse for the directing duo to bathe in their favorite generic sensibilities, particularly in the 1980s. In doing so, they created four stories based purely on different vibes that genre cinema conveys to the audience.
As an avid fan of 1980s action and horror cinema, this anthology epic rocked my world. It contained everything I love about moviemaking, packaged in four distinct tales that will each elicit a different reaction from you.
The first short, “Strength in Numbers (AKA The Gilman Strikes Back),” is possibly the most “classic” of the bunch, in the sense that it depicts a relatively simple conflict between good and evil, with little development on the central characters, Lucid (Jack Champion) and Tina (Ji-young Yoo). The two are madly in love with one another—and that’s about all we know about them before they are thwarted in a battle against neo-Nazis who want to shut down the club they hang out in. Nothing more, nothing less. Again, an excuse for Boden and Fleck to create four exercises in style. Whether that’s your jam or not, you’ll find out fairly quickly as the central action set piece of the first short is set in motion.
The battle itself is what makes the movie stand out among the bevy of anthology productions made each year—fun, eye-popping, and bracingly kinetic. However, it also continues to showcase Boden and Fleck as highly versatile directors, capable of helming big-budget entertainment on film and television with Captain Marvel and Masters of the Air and smaller-scale stories with It’s Kind of a Funny Story and Mississippi Grind. In that regard, Freaky Tales seemingly bridges their more independent, auteur-driven works and commercially friendly productions, particularly in that opening confrontation. We have a large-scale fight that seems worthy of the stuff they’ve visualized in the MCU, but with a more personal touch to the cathartic violence they display: Scott Pilgrim-esque onomatopoeia punctuates each hit, and the gratuitous blood literally leaps off the 4:3 frame—the biggest example that this will be nothing more than an aesthetic exercise to remind themselves why they love movies, and, more importantly, why they love creating.
But it isn’t just a mere exercise with A-list talent displayed at the forefront of their picture. Within each short, Boden and Fleck intelligently add several details that feed into the film’s different stories, such as briefly alluding to Barbie (Dominique Thorne) and Entice (Normani) in the first chapter before they get their own segment with “Don’t Fight the Feeling,” or introducing Clint (Pedro Pascal) as he walks by Lucid and Tina at a diner, which will be repeated once we get to his story, “Born to Mack.” However, the character who gets the most to do in each chapter is “The Guy” (Ben Mendelsohn), whose true motives are only revealed in the last tale, “The Legend of Sleepy Floyd,” which ties all of the short stories together so efficiently.
Any astute viewer will instantly be rewarded for paying close attention to everything Boden and Fleck allude to in the movie’s first three parts. Mendelsohn, a frequent collaborator of Boden and Fleck, completely revels in playing a character with zero redeeming qualities. He amps up the tension just by how he looks at each person. Mendelsohn meets everyone with a menacing death stare and has tons of fun chewing the scenery, delivering dark, funny one-liners.
These stares are thrillingly visualized through extreme close–up confrontations, which immediately shift the atmosphere and add great suspense to the mix. With the aid of cinematographer Jac Fitzgerald, who also worked with Boden and Fleck on Masters of the Air, Freaky Tales is a movie all about atmosphere. Each short and subsequent visual approach to the stories, imbues a specific atmospheric environment to the audience, from catharsis in the first to sorrow in the third, and finally, crowd-pleasing exhilaration by the time the movie wraps up. All of these aren’t conveyed by its actors, even though they all bring their A-game to the stories; Pascal notably delivers his best-ever performance in a film as Clint. Instead, Boden and Fleck convey it through its expressive visual language, which continuously adapts to the stories told on screen. The aspect ratio constantly shifts, the VHS scuzz turns into film grain, the violence goes from heightened to realistic to cartoonishly over-the-top, and even the color palette changes to represent how light or heavy a story may get to prime the audience on how they feel.
Freaky Tales is a True Celebration of 1980s Genre Cinema
Of course, all of it is a pastiche. Freaky Tales constantly pulls references from the period the film is set in, movies of that era. Hell, it even responds to specific throwaway sentences by making them an integral part of the viewing experience, notably by paying off a tiny bit of comedy with what will likely be the best—and most unexpected—cameo of any movie released in 2025.
Even I, someone who usually rolls his eyes every time a self-referential appearance from an actor or music star pops up, couldn’t resist being excited at the mere sight of such a silver screen legend, quizzing Pascal’s Clint on Underdog movies at a video store. Boden and Fleck could’ve quickly fallen into the trap of making a film that consistently winked at the audience at genre titles they know and love without offering much in return. Yet, they never do this; instead, they wear each influence they appropriate on their sleeves and give it their personal twist.
None of the apparent winks feel egregious or like a carbon copy of its original inspiration. Boden and Fleck possess enough flair to make this anthology feel like their own celebration of what they love the most about genre cinema. They could’ve absolutely filled their motion picture with endless references that act as moments for the audience to point and clap in recognition for an artificial dopamine hit that doesn’t last longer than five seconds, but they chose not to and instead delivered a genre-blender that feels wildly original and constantly surprises. Even the biggest cynics won’t resist hooting and hollering at its Game of Death-inspired climax, where a fictionalized version of Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis) gives the bad guys what they had coming all along.
When a movie wraps up on such an adrenaline-fueled sequence coupled with an anachronistic needle-drop that made the scene even cooler, it’s hard to say with a straight face that Freaky Tales doesn’t work. The film doesn’t need to say anything but imbue the immaculate vibes of 80s genre cinema with such extreme confidence that you’ll ultimately be won over by its ultra-creative stylistic permutations, self-aware performances, and intelligently-constructed stories that constantly communicate with itself, both to the audience and the characters.
The anthology film is also way smarter than you think—especially how Boden and Fleck connect each story to its overarching message. You’ll have to see this incredibly crowd-pleasing piece of entertainment for yourself, though.
Freaky Tales is currently in theaters everywhere.