As the final credits of Christian James’s Freak Out started to roll, I was perplexed because I was sure I’d missed something, so I marched my little butt to the computer and proceeded to read what others thought about the film and this is what I have thus surmised: Apparently, a) I watched another film by the same name or b) I’m just one of those rare people for which the movie just isn’t the person’s particular cup of tea. Admittedly, everyone has a film or two that everyone else seems to love but that they just don’t care for. Case in point, I can see why people like Stars Wars and Indiana Jones, but these films just don’t do it for me. That said, Freak Out just doesn’t do it for me but it might very well be the next best thing since sliced bread for the next person.
When horror movie buff Merv Doody (James Heathcote) is first approached by a mental asylum escapee (played by multiple actors), he fears for his life. However, once he realizes that the would-be psycho is a harmless, extremely effeminate vegetarian with a lisp, he presents his new find to his friend, Onkey (co-writer Dan Palmer) with the idea that they can create their own real-life horror movie antagonist. Furthermore, seeing the potential for a cash cow, they initiate the R & D for a toy line of their Frankensteinian monster. Just as they start to toss in the towel as all of their mass murderer-making efforts fall by the wayside, their slasher prototype suddenly begins his serial killing onslaught. Can they stop their spatula-welding loony before it’s too late?
James’s film has been eagerly anticipated for quite some time (the film took five years to make) due largely to internet word-of-mouth, perhaps a bit too much because I was expecting big things from this production as a consequence. I liked the premise and seeing a still with two guys, one clad in a hockey mask over the top of a potato sack as a red-and-green sweater seeped out from under an orange jumpsuit as the other, an obvious geek, polished a chainsaw . . . what’s not to get giddy about?
Yet, to my dismay, I found the humor to be an aggregation of sophomoric skits which the filmmakers seemed to have nudge-nudged one another with throughout the years before deciding to write them into the script thinking that since they continued to get a good chuckle out of them, everyone else would as well, all the while negligent of whether or not the various ha-has would serve the film’s purposes. In short, unlike its British counterpart, Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, Freak Out doesn’t have the cohesion it should as the social satire of the latter fails to strike a cord where the genre parody of the former is succinct and to the point.
Instead of laughing, I found myself resorting to playing “Name that Reference” in order to pass the time. With this in mind, I tallied up Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste (perhaps inadvertent in that Freak Out’s cinematography echoes its horror comedy forerunner) before encountering Don Coscarelli’s Bubba Ho-Tep (one of the subtler nods), Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Mary Harron’s American Psycho, Bob Clark’s Black Christmas or Fred Walton’s When a Stranger Calls (your call–no pun intended), Daniel Myrick’s The Blair Witch Project, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, James Whale’s Frankenstein, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead and a barrage of allusions to various Jim Carrey films, Kevin Smith’s Mallrats, as well as Tony Scott’s Beverly Hills Cop II.
An apt analogy would be that Freak Out is to Shaun of the Dead as John Landis’s Kentucky Fried Movie is to Jim Abrahams’s Airplane!. Granted, as I’ve said, perhaps the film’s mere prospect built my expectations to Babel-esque proportions considering, if nothing else, I revel in horror comedies and therefore–considering they are few and far in between–I wanted one which I could praise and rejoice but, alas, I’m unable to advocate Christian James’s film in that his central character’s surname seems to serve as a metaphor for the work as a whole. However, considering I am aware of the numerous subjective limitations that coexist with such a sentiment, alongside most every other critic applauding the work, I advise everyone to see whether or not this is their particular Earl Gray. If not, you are fee to rejoin me at the Winchester over a pint.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
