Freaks
Directed By: Zach Lipovsky
Cast
Emile Hirsch as Dad
Bruce Dern as Mr.Snowcone
Grace Park as Agent Ray
Amanda Crew as Mary
Lexy Kolker as Chloe
Kwesi Ameyaw as Interviewer
Aria Birch as Mean Girl
Dakota Daulby as Dr. Daulby
Matty Finochio as Steven Reed
Michelle Harrison as Nancy Reed
Aleks Paunovic as Robert Kraigen
Dean Redman as ADF Captain
Even without Lexy Kolker, Freaks would be a well-above-average horror/fantasy movie. It comes from a genre that occasionally produces brilliant stories. “It’s a GOOD Life” a Twilight Zone episode with Billy Mumy as a five year old volatile kid who has the ability to send anyone “to the corn,” is often listed as the best of that particular series. Elfen Lied is considered a superior, if highly disturbing anime series. Stephen King wrote two such novels, Carrie and Firestarter, and made his bones as a great in his genre with them. Just last week I reviewed I’m Not OK With This in which my only complaint was it greatly resembled Carrie. Still a good series and well worth watching.
In Freaks, we stumble into a society much like our own present-day society, except that for some three or four generations it has been persecuting a subset of humanity that has special powers and abilities. The persecution has hardened into genocide as “normals” realize the “freaks” are getting stronger.
Chloe is a seven-year-old girl (played by then seven-year-old Lexy Kolker) who lives with her seemingly demented father (Emile Hirsch) in a house that has multiple locks on the doors and the windows taped over so nobody can see in. The house is decrepit, an abandoned property, but they could afford better—there’s millions of dollars in cash floating around the place.
Chloe has never been outside, but one day sees an ice cream truck parked outside. With her father sleeping, she grabs a hundred dollar bill off a tall stack of such and ventures out to get an ice cream cone. The truck is driven by a creepy old guy (Bruce Dern) who takes an unnatural and perhaps sinister interest in the child. It is here that we learn that Chloe is not normal. Not at all.
This is an intelligently-written and very well directed movie with an outstanding cast. Even with a child actor of average talent playing Chloe, it would be a movie well worth watching. But with an incandescent performance by Lexy Kolker, it becomes a superior movie. I don’t think I’ve seen a performance like this by a young child. You forget that she’s acting. The expression on her face in the final scene will haunt you.
Now on Netflix.