Freak Out (2004)

[DB7]

Jonathan Doyle (www.fantasiafest.com)

Freak Out offers a sobering warning to all potential victims of serial killers: if your serial killer is incompetent and unable to kill you, do not train him! Send him away. Unfortunately, Doody fails to heed this warning. He is attacked by the film’s troubled serial killer, a rejected theatre geek, seeking revenge on a world that no longer embraces the conventions of vaudeville. This madman desperately wants to kill but his Steven Sondheim-inspired worldview prevents him from closing the deal. However, after foiling an easily foiled Norman Bates-in-a-burlap-sack shower attack, Doody decides to put his encyclopedic knowledge of horror films to good use, training his attacker to attack others. This leads to countless bizarre scenarios and Doody grows close to his attacker. However, Frankenstein soon loses control over his monster and the situation turns ugly. Really ugly.

This shockingly well-executed exercise in no-budget resourcefulness miraculously surpasses almost every horror movie parody in recent memory. This isn’t just another self-conscious, post-modern horror spoof, it’s a charming, well-intentioned love letter to the world of horror, an unlikely amalgam of slapstick, parody, ridiculous pop music montage, and gratuitous, remorseless murder. Scene after scene, the bizarre ideas keep coming and keep working. Right when you fear that Freak Out has run out of steam, there’s yet another expectation-shattering twist. These filmmakers take their ideas so far, it seems unthinkable that this film could possibly succeed as a narrative with three dimensional characters. But it does. Even more surprising is the polished work of James Heathcote and co-writer Dan Palmer, as the film’s naïve, wide-eyed protagonists. These actors have more natural talent than most of the seasoned pros they’re parodying. While director Christian James may not possess a masterful command of the medium, he’s an expert purveyor of screen comedy. And anyway, these scenes don’t require elaborate visual pyrotechnics. In fact, it’s a pleasure to watch scene-after-scene succeed, solely on the strength of imaginative, original ideas. By embracing campy cheesiness as a virtue, the filmmakers actually benefit from their limitations.

This insane undertaking took almost five years to complete and the hard work has paid off. This is one of the surefire crowd-pleasers at this year’s festival and it is essential viewing for comedy fans, horror fans, and, most importantly, Larry Hagman fans (many of whom are killed in the film). Even as an elaborate homage to dozens of other films, Freak Out emerges as a distinct, bum-feeling entity all its own. You’ve never seen anything quite like this.