Nostalgia for the 1980s has been in vogue since the release of Stranger Things in 2016. The Netflix show brought about a renaissance of interest in the popular culture of the time firmly rooted in nostalgia – video game arcades, the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, horror films and a reverie for the horror of the VHS and video-nasty era.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of this form of nostalgia – if it’s done right. Freaky Tales, an anthology film that deals with 80s’ California punk, anti-fascism, hip-hop and VHS culture, could have been a great addition to this sort of nostalgia bait. Sadly, it is a mess, which, for most of its run time, feels like a film about the 80s generated by AI.
To go on TikTok is to be confronted by a gen-Z army cosplaying a neon-drenched and romanticised version of the 80s. Filters are used to replicate the low-fi aesthetics of VHS tape, super 8 and cinefilm, while the content creators dress in the styles of the decade and espouse a wishful nostalgia for an era they are at least three decades too young to have experienced firsthand. Freaky Tales seems aimed at this market.
