With its VHS bargain-bin aesthetic, this is scuzzily enjoyable stuff.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2025

Freaky Tales never amounts to more than the sum of its parts — but those parts, while uneven, are always high-energy and entertaining.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 15, 2025

I thoroughly enjoyed this film... It has a sort of Repo Man quality to it where you probably don't want to ask too many questions.

| Apr 9, 2025

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, Freaky Tales contains a bit more mojo than the average indie.

| Apr 5, 2025

A scrappy, underdog enthusiasm is unmistakable throughout.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 4, 2025

Most of the places and some of the people are real. But the star is the movie’s hyperactive, even overwhelmingly contradictory nostalgia.

| Apr 4, 2025

It's charming to see Boden and Fleck find a less mechanical, less programmatic way to have fun.

| Original Score: B | Apr 4, 2025

Clearly, the cast had a great time. But for us, there’s a sense by then that maybe you sorta had to be there.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 3, 2025

There's a lot going on in this anthology film. The directors find joy in moments that might otherwise read as brutal.

| Apr 3, 2025

The movie's shaggy and very much not to everyone's taste, but if you find yourself on its wavelength, I think you'll have a really good time with it.

| Apr 3, 2025

It’s a midnight movie with clean fingernails — a nostalgia tour where, for all the on-screen blood, no one actually gets hurt, least of all the audience.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 3, 2025

Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s “Freaky Tales” is a nostalgic homage to the music, movies and personalities of the 1980s.

| Apr 3, 2025

It’s a genuine shame that such a clearly personal project for the filmmakers gets so lost.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 3, 2025

“Freaky Tales” isn’t designed for the uptight viewer who isn’t willing to go with the crazy flow, but should you fully embrace its passionate love for all things Oakland and ‘80s-era filmmaking, music and sports you’ll be in cinematic heaven.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 2, 2025

Soaking the streets in blood is only as much fun if you also have enough compelling characters to splash in such puddles of gore. And Freaky Tales has neither the patience nor the depth to imagine any one person or story with a legitimate hook.

| Apr 1, 2025

For all of its spiritedness, Freaky Tales wants for the sense of invention that defines the films that it references and whose moves it often falls back on borrowing.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 30, 2025

An exhausting Tarantino pastiche that aims for cool above all else and falls woefully short

| Jan 30, 2024

For all its slick style, the film lacks narrative substance to match.

| Jan 25, 2024

There are moments that are undeniably fun, but the script needed another punch-up for humor and style, and the visuals needed to understand that what masters like Carpenter and Hill pulled off in their genre flicks was tougher than it looked.

| Jan 23, 2024

Even with all the psychic energy and violent revenge fantasies, it's the performances that help keep this tale grounded. Actors including Pascal, Normani, Thorne, Ellis, and the late Angus Cloud.

| Original Score: B+ | Jan 22, 2024