After a snowy Wednesday in Park City dampened the arrival fanfare of previous festivals, Sundance enjoyed the sunshine on opening day Thursday. With plenty of powder providing an idyllic backdrop for selfies and social media updates, festival audiences lined up for the biggest film premiere of the day: “Freaky Tales,” securing the coveted early evening spot at the Eccles Center. However, dozens of replacement candidates were left out in the cold at the popular event, which opened the festival with a rollicking performance.
The film marks a Sundance homecoming for director Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, whose breakthrough was the 2006 Sundance favorite “Half Nelson”; The pair most recently made the decidedly non-independent superhero film “Captain Marvel” in 2019. “Freaky Tales” is a return to their seedy roots: an anthology horror-thriller comedy that follows '80s Oakland film stars Pedro Pascal , Jay Ellis, Normani, Dominique Thorne, Ben Mendelsohn, Ji-Young Yoo and the others pay tribute to the late Angus Cloud – not to mention a secret A-list cameo from an actor with Oakland ties that brought the audience to its knees brought.
The anthology film unfolds as a collection of stories, including a punk-versus-Nazis take on Walter Hill's “The Warriors” and a rap battle featuring Normani and Thorne. There's also an intense revenge story with Pascal as a newly retired sports gambling enforcer. But the real showstopper is a scandalous action film starring Ellis in which dozens of white supremacists are murdered and which features many examples of classic kung fu films, including a striking yellow jumpsuit similar to the one worn by Bruce Lee in “Game of.” Death” and again by Uma Thurman in “Kill Bill”.
“Freaky Tales” is also a love letter to the Bay Area – particularly the region’s music, with a soundtrack full of local favorites like E-40, Metallica and Too Short, who also stars in the film as a narrator and serves as an executive producer, and whose 1987 hit gives the film its name.
The Sundance audience was very lively during many scenes in the film, frequently clapping and cheering at the triumphant moments and shocking gore.
The film's final title card, which read, “In Loving Memory of Angus Cloud,” ended the screening with thunderous applause. Fleck and Boden then took the stage for a question-and-answer session, introducing some of the film's biggest names, including Too Short, Pascal, Normani and Ellis.
When asked to share his favorite day on set, Ellis told a story about bantering with Pascal, Mendelsohn and Cloud, who died at his family's Oakland home last July.
“Rest in peace, Angus. He delivered a great performance,” Ellis shared.
The film is one of several seeking distribution, and the audience at Sundance included executives from Netflix, Sony Pictures Classics and Neon.
Sundance's opening day saw several exciting premieres, including the debuts of documentaries “Girls State” and “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story,” as well as “Veni Vidi Vici,” a dark look at the super-rich.