Dir. Steven Kostanski (2024)
A loser workaholic comes across a dancing goblin that makes his life more interesting.
Steven Kostanski has had one of the strangest careers ever. He started with strange, analog-type action horror like Manborg before pivoting to make a terrifying and bizarre Lovecraftian horror in The Void. He followed that up with the worst Leprechaun movie and then the cult classic family comedy hit Psycho Goreman. Now he's back with a PG-like attempt to recapture the magic, a film about that tries to hearken back to the playfully fun puppet horror films of the 80's called Frankie Freako.
Conor (Conor Sweeney) is a square dude who fails to make his girlfriend happy or succeed at his job because he's completely unwilling to step outside of his comfort zone. And when I say comfort zone, he's basically a Mennonite, railing against swearing on television and refusing to do anything with his girlfriend outside of holding hands. After seeing a television commercial for a party line starring a strange goblin named Frankie Freako, he gets more than he bargained for as Frankie teaches him how to let loose while subsequently destroying everything in his life.
A bizarre mishmash of Beetlejuice, Flash Gordon, and Ghoulies, Frankie Freako leans heavily into 80's influence while trying to make it's own path as well. Sweeney is decent as the lovable dork Conor, and he does his best to make the film work. For his part, it largely does. Kostanski-mainstay Matthew Kennedy does his best Warwick Davis impression as the diminutive Frankie, and I could definitely see him being an audience favorite in the age of toy-marketed films. And, while I get that that's the direction the film attempts to go, it's not the world we live in anymore. As a throwback, it's fitting, but it fails to provide anything new or as worthwhile as the films it references.
There's just something about Kostanski's films that don't do it for me. I've seen Psycho Goreman several times, and while it certainly has some excellent creature design and some fun gore, the humor is a swing and a miss. Frankie Freako is much along the same lines. It's a fun throwback movie that clearly doesn't take itself seriously at all, but that's also the major issue that I have with them. It has an exceptionally juvenile sense of humor, which normally wouldn't be a bad thing, but it's also just not funny to me.
That said, if you're a fan of Kostanski's other films, you'll likely enjoy this one as well. The same type of humor runs through, though I did find it decidedly less humorous than Goreman. There's also a lot less gore than in his previous films. That's not to say the effects aren't a lot of fun, because they are. The puppet design is pretty cool, the digital effects are dated on purpose, and the miniature designs are a throwback to a great era of cinema. If that's what you're looking for, you'll definitely find it here. However, the lack of my type of humor made this one just a passably enjoyable effort.
Who this movie is for: 80's horror fans, Pulp science fiction stans, Un-freaky people
Bottom line: Frankie Freako attempts to reach back into the puppet films of yesteryear, trying to recapture the magic of movies like Critters, Gremlins, and the like. Unfortunately, an over-the-top juvenile sense of humor and a lack of anything novel to say makes it fall a bit short for me. If you're a fan of director Steven Kostanski, you're probably going to love this one. As someone for whom he's largely a miss, this one wasn't quite a hit for me. I definitely recognize the homage to the 80's, and I appreciate it, but it wasn't quite enough to hit home.
