I am a sucker for a film featuring interconnected stories. Intermission, Love, Actually. Magnolia, Go, Pulp Fiction. All bangers in their own way. So when Freaky Tales hit my radar, I had to snag a seat for opening weekend.

Movie fans are always complaining about the lack of original IP, but yet again, I found myself in a near-empty AMC auditorium on a Saturday night. We gotta do better, people!

If you love the quirky intertwined stories in Pulp Fiction, the revenge-fueled vibes of Kill Bill, Pedro Pascal, West Coast rap legend Too Short, Oakland and the downfall of bigots, you gotta check this film out. 

Let me lay out the plot of this action-comedy with a stacked roster of talent, including Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn, Jay Ellis, Normani and Angus Cloud (RIP), and some superstar cameos.

Freaky Tales is a bold and ambitious anthology film from Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the filmmaking duo behind Half Nelson and Captain Marvel. The action-comedy threads together four stories, all taking place on or around May 10, 1987, in Oakland, California, a massive day in Golden State Warriors history.

In this first tale, a trio of punks clashes with a violent band of skinheads attempting to violate the venue and the anti-fascist punks in attendance. This story draws from the real-life tensions between the ‘80s Bay punk community and the white supremacists trying to take down subcultures that stood firmly against them. 

Inspired by real-life events with heightened cinematic twists, the film opens at the iconic Berkeley punk venue 924 Gilman Street, where bands like Operation Ivy, AFI, Green Day and more cut their teeth. 

Back in the day, Gilman was an anti-racist, anti-corporate, community-run haven/music venue that took a hard stand against hate. The fictional punks in the film go full DIY, teaching themselves self-defense to take on the violent skinheads. Their final showdown is extra-satisfying for those on the right side of history.

If you want to learn more about the evolution of the Bay Area punk scene, check out the kickass doc Turn It Around: Story of East Bay Punk on Kanopy if you have a library card or any of the links listed here.

The anthology switches focus to hip-hop for its second chapter. Entice and Barbie (played by Normani and Dominique Thorne) are working day jobs in an ice cream shop while proving themselves as the untouchable emcees known as Danger Zone when they’re invited to battle none other than Bay Area legend Too Short, played by rapper Symba. 

(The real Too Short is still all over the project. Aside from a quick cameo, the movie is named after one of his songs, and he also serves as the film’s narrator and executive producer.)

Wrestling with nerves and an audience of haters, Danger Zone takes the stage at the now-defunct Sweet Jimmie’s, once a staple of Oakland’s nightlife and hip-hop culture in the ’80s and ’90s, to face the Bay Area legend with an unforgettable favorite word.

This is the sole non-violent entry in the film and feels slightly out of place in the film, but it’s an inspirational and amusing tale nonetheless.

Freaky Tale’s penultimate installment features the biggest stars of the film and delivers the most conventional storytelling. The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal plays a debt-collecting enforcer for a big bad known as The Guy. 

It’s his final job before he retires to spend time with his pregnant wife, who loves watching movies. And all he has to do before he rides off into the sunset is collect some scratch from a dude playing poker in an illegal gambling den at the back of a video store run by [click here for a spoiled cameo] who offers up a list of must-watch movie recs too haha. And as you may have guessed, things spiral with the quickness, leading us to the film’s grand finale:

Twenty-eight years before Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors kicked off one of the greatest championship runs in NBA history, one of their forefathers pulled off the impossible. On May 10, 1987, in Game 4 of the Western Conference Semifinals against the Showtime-era Lakers, Eric “Sleepy” Floyd delivered a performance for the ages.

The Warriors were down 3–0 in the series and facing elimination. But on that night, Floyd erupted for 51 points, including an NBA playoff (unbroken) record 29 points in the fourth quarter. He torched a Lakers defense stacked with future Hall of Famers like Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and the Bay still talks about that magical night.

“That game I had in 1987 still lives with people who were around at that time in the Bay Area and even really across the country,” Floyd told the San Francisco Chronicle before the film’s premiere. “Wherever I go, people come up to me and still speak to me about that game.”

Floyd’s iconic performance is spun into a fictionalized, hyper-stylized revenge saga for the film’s final chapter. The baller (in a career-best performance from Insecure’s Jay Ellis) returns home after the game to find that a group of white supremacist thugs has broken into his house and murdered his girlfriend. What follows is a full-on Kill Bill-style rampage, as Floyd methodically hunts down each of the men responsible and kills them in imaginative and brutal ways.

It’s a bold, operatic finale that perfectly caps off this charmingly chaotic, genre-hopping anthology, which wears its love for Tarantino, Cronenberg and the Bay Area on its sleeve.

If you’re craving a sub-2-hour ride packed with big names, surprise cameos and storytelling that gleefully colors outside the lines, Freaky Tales is a must-watch.