Hello everyone. Welcome to Slash Film Daily. Today is Friday, April 4th, 2025. On today's episode of the show, I'm going to talk about the new movie Freaky Tales and present an interview with the film's writers and directors. My name is Ben Pearson. I'm an editor at slashfilm.com. And once again, it is just me on today. So Freaky Tales debuted at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and Lionsgate picked it up and is putting it in theaters today.

It is the newest movie from Anna Bowden and Ryan Fleck.

You might recognize those names because they were the writer-directors of Marvel Studios Captain Marvel,

which made over a billion dollars to the box office and made Anna Bowden the first woman to direct a movie that

crossed to that threshold. But if you know their work, you'll know that Captain Marvel was a

huge outlier for them. They came from the world of indie cinema, making films like

Half Nelson, Sugar, It's Kind of a Funny Story, and Mississippi Grind. Freaky Tales is another

outlier, and stylistically, it could not be further

from what they've done in the past.

This is a period piece set in Oakland in the 1980s,

with multiple chapters telling distinct stories

about characters who occasionally cross-pollinate

into the other characters' stories.

There are some sci-fi elements,

there's a hip-hop component,

there's a hitman working on one last

mission before he retires. It's sort of a mishmash of ideas and tones. There's a mixtape that

factors into the story, and at one point in our interview, Anna Bowden referred to the movie itself as a

mixtape of homages to the types of films that she and Ryan grew up loving.

That mixtape quality of the storytelling will likely work better for some folks than others.

Like any anthology, there were stories that I cared about much more than others here.

But at least the cast is solid across the board.

...