MEDIOCREMOVIE.CLUB
  • Reviews
  • Side Pieces
  • Shane of Thrones
  • Podcast
  • About
  • Archives
  • Game of Thrones Fantasy

Freaks

5/13/2020

0 Comments

 

C-
​1.83

A mysterious girl is forbidden to leave her house by her father.

Directed by Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky
Starring Lexy Kolker, Emile Hirsch, and Bruce Dern
​Review by Jon Kissel

Picture
The legend of Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, holds that he consulted the wise algorithm for ideas about what original programming to produce, and he discovered that subscribers loved Kevin Spacey and David Fincher.  Voila, House of Cards is born.  Seven years later, Spacey has a lesser Q-rating, but the same smell of calculated imitation is all over Freaks.  A hearty base of Stranger Things, some Dogtooth for indie cred, a seasoning of contemporary buzzwords for political relevance, and there’s your movie.  Directors Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky have enough pull to entice well-known actors, and that seems to be the only reason this was released in theaters instead of buried on the SyFy channel.  

To the film’s credit, the plot of Freaks is slowly pieced out with admirable restraint.  It begins with Emile Hirsch’s Henry years into the construction of an elaborate mental prison for his daughter Chloe (Lexy Kolker).  She isn’t allowed to leave the house and is told that she will be killed by bad men if she does.  Enticed to leave by ice cream seller Mr. Snowcone (Bruce Dern), Chloe is shown to have powers of suggestion and projection.  Her father’s machinations, possibly nefarious based on the casting of real-life dirtbag Hirsch and an air of abusive menace that he projects, are shown to be legitimate, as all the main characters including father-in-law Mr. Snowcone have powers of one sort or another and are actively being hunted by the government. 
​
If superhero movies are going to continue to dominate the movie landscape, there’ll be plenty of lo-fi auditions like this one coming out of indie land.  There’s ample precedence of directors of big MCU properties getting their big breaks after making one or two micro-budget films, and it sure seems like Stein and Lipovsky are making a naked play to join those ranks.  Their output here is satisfactory if unmemorable, though they make it as hard to sympathize with Freaks’ Anne-Frank-equivalent as possible.  A lot of bystanders are killed in Freaks, and I’m not just talking about the jack-booted thugs in riot gear.  Grandpa Dern and Chloe both frame a civilian to be murdered.  Chloe uses her powers on a neighbor girl in a creepy way, and while there’s definitely something to a super-powered child using their powers for evil because how could they not, the film puts its finger on the scale by having Chloe’s victim be costumed like a mean girl fresh from the pageant circuit.  This is a film that wants to be edgy but just ends up being cruel, and that muddling makes it difficult to invest in any of the proceedings.

Another work about supernatural beings living among us, True Blood, always had pretensions of being a metaphor for oppressed groups, specifically LGBT groups, but that show’s queer stand-ins were actively feasting on humans and manipulating society to their own ends.  It’s not a great metaphor if it’s living into the worst fears of bigots.  Similarly, Freaks wants to elicit comparisons to underground groups by using the language of undocumented immigrants.  That impulse is well and good, but again, maybe don’t have the subject of your social justice statement be actively dangerous if you’re so obviously going to try for goodwill PC points.  That ill-consideration is indicative of Freaks’ inability to convince me to care about anything that happens in the film.  I welcome on-the-cheap attempts to capitalize on superhero movies.  Fast Color is a recent and successful example of exactly that.  This is mercenary imitation that doesn’t justify its own existence, especially when I can use the same streaming service to watch what it’s based on.  C-
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Authors

    JUST SOME IDIOTS GIVING SURPRISINGLY AVERAGE MOVIE REVIEWS.

    Categories

    All
    2017 Catch Up Trio
    80s
    Action
    Adventure
    AI Trio
    Author - Blair
    Author - Bobby
    Author - Bryan
    Author - Chris
    Author - Cook
    Author - Drew
    Author - Joe
    Author - Jon
    Author - JR
    Author - Lane
    Author - Phil
    Author - Pierce
    Author - Sean
    Author - Shane
    Author - Tom
    Best Of 2016
    Best Of 2017
    Best Of 2018
    Best Of 2019
    Best Of 2020
    Best Of 2021
    Best Of 2022
    Comedy
    Culture Clash Trio
    Denzel Trio
    Documentary
    Drama
    Foreign
    Historical
    Horror
    Internet Docs Trio
    Mediocrities
    Movie Trios
    Musical
    Podcast
    Romance
    Round 3.1
    Round 3.2
    Round 3.3
    Round 4.1
    Round 4.2
    Round 4.3
    Sci Fi
    Season 10
    Season 2
    Season 3
    Season 4
    Season 5
    Season 6
    Season 7
    Season 8
    Season 9
    Shorts
    Sports
    Thriller
    Western
    Women In Men's Worlds

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014

    Click to set custom HTML