Movie Review: Freaks

Freaks **** / *****

Directed by: Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein.

Written by: Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein.

Starring: Lexy Kolker (Chloe), Emile Hirsch (Dad), Bruce Dern (Mr. Snowcone), Grace Park (Agent Ray), Amanda Crew (Mary), Ava Telek (Harper Reed), Michelle Harrison (Nancy Reed), Matty Finochio (Steven Reed).

 

I am not a spoilerphobe – not really anyway. I don’t spend my time policing what everyone says in their reviews for spoilers, and I don’t get that upset about them – knowing full well that there are any number of masterpieces I knew the “surprises” to before watching them and it didn’t ruin them. Having said that, typically if I know I’m going to see a movie, I don’t read many reviews of them before I do – trailers already give away too much, so why add more? I do get a general sense of the critical reaction is, and then look away. One of the reasons I did this was because of a tweet by critic Sam Adams in the wake of 10 Cloverfield Lane where he basically said if you liked knowing nothing about the movie going in, you could have that experience with every movie if you just didn’t pay attention to the pre-release hype.

 

I bring all this up at the top of my review for Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein’s Freaks because it’s a film that’s been on my radar since TIFF 2018 – where a few critics (Glen Weldon, Tasha Robinson) talked about it briefly, and I filed it away for later use. The film came and went in theaters very quickly a few months back, and now it’s available on VOD – and I watched it, knowing next to nothing about it – other than the basic premise – a girl and her dad, living in an old house where she cannot go outside, and Bruce Dern as a creepy ice cream man. That is the best way to see Freaks. I assumed it was a horror movie – I assumed wrong. I’m not sure it’s a particularly original movie – but I do know I enjoyed watching it unfold, as up until the last act, the film surprised me with its narrative developments – to go along with fine direction, writing and performances. You should see this movie knowing just that.

 

Now, if you’re still here, I assume you have already seen Freaks, or don’t care about spoilers. That basic outline of Freaks is what happens – 8-year-old Chloe (a very good Lexy Kolker) lives in a dilapidated dump with her paranoid father (Emile Hirsch) – who refuses to let her outside for any reason, and only goes out occasionally himself – telling her that the people out there want to kill them. They do have stacks of money somehow though – and strangely, Chloe seems to know the neighbor’s names, and at the very least is aware of Mr. Snowcone (Bruce Dern) who often sits outside their house in his ice cream truck, and even drops off a homemade book for her. For a while, you wonder if this is going to be a movie about an abusive, mentally ill father – someone who believes people are out to get him, when really they aren’t. But slowly, we start getting hints that the outside world isn’t normal – that there really may things that aren’t right outside.

 

Basically, what Freaks becomes is the third alternate superhero/villain origin story of the year – and the best following Brightburn and Fast Color. It smartly limited our point-of-view’s to Chloe’s, so that we understand how wrong everything is well before she does – but not quite why. Gradually things snap into focus. It’s like the origin of every one of the X-Men – hinted at here and there in the movies, or covered in a minute, but expanded to 104-minutes – and ending on a note where you’re not sure if you’ve watched the origin of a hero, or someone who will be destroy us all.

 

Writer/directors Lipovsky and Stein smartly keep things fairly low-tech for most of the film – there was clearly a special effects budget – but not a huge one – and they save it for the final act, when the cats out of the bag of just what is happening, and why. Until then, they’ve crafted a tense little thriller – one that keeps you on your toes. I was honestly a little disappointed in the final act – I wanted them to push things further than they do, get weirder, and instead they play it fairly straight. Still, the movie is really effective, surprising and entertaining – all the more the less you know heading into it. It’s a pleasure to be surprised like this in a movie.