Freaky Tales is a unicorn in the best of ways. The quasi-anthology, directed by Captain Marvel’s Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, delivers the kind of form-pushing narrative you don’t see every day. The writer-director duo have crafted a potent cocktail of resilience and ‘80s nostalgia out of four interconnected stories. It’s inspired partially by the figures that shaped Fleck’s youth, like the Oakland rapper Too $hort or Lakers point guard Eric “Sleepy” Floyd, and bolstered by the strength of his imagination.
“These sorts of things echoed through my mind for a long time,” Fleck tells Inverse over Zoom. “I thought, ‘Freaky Tales is going to be a movie that Anna and I are going to make one day.’”
