I considered seeing Freaks in the theater, but the summary, while intriguing, was a little too vague to seal the deal, and it was not playing in a theater near me so I put it in my queue then watched it as soon as it became available for home viewing. It is now streaming on Netflix. I actually agree that the summary should not give away too much and am annoyed at reviews that give away all the twists and turns, which makes the movie lose all its impact.

Freaks is a movie told through the eyes of a little girl protagonist, Chloe. I like the movie because that little girl is not always likeable, and when you see other people interact with her, while you cannot condone why she is such a predicament, you can understand it. I watch a lot of movies so if I had problems guessing what was going on without spoilers, then neither will you. When we meet her and her father, whom Emile Hirsch plays, it is obvious that something strange is going on, but is the strangeness objective or subjective, especially since we are seeing everything through a child’s eyes. The movie strikes a difficult balance of answering questions, but leaving us with enough that the momentum of the film amps up instead of slows down. Did something bad happen? What? Should we call DCF? Is her dad just nuts? Is it real, supernatural or science based? By the end of the movie, it retroactively makes sense and works even though it initially feels surreal and bewildering. Just go with it

If you are a little concerned about committing to a movie with little to no knowledge of the actual plot with the majority of the film resting on a child actor’s shoulders, do not be. I am not a fan of child actors, but Lexy Kolker never acts as if she is acting. She is a natural. If you do not want to take my word for it, then trust Bruce Dern, who plays a major supporting role, but I will not reveal more about who he is in Freaks.

Visually Freaks is effective. Chloe’s life with her dad is depicted as dark, dingy, cluttered with an intricate production design. The house looks so organically lived in that it is hard to imagine that it was created for this movie. Because Chloe is unaccustomed to the outside world, the lighting is over saturated, bright and colorful. The outside world initially reminded me of A Wrinkle in Time so I believed that it was dangerous. As she spends more time outside, visually it acclimates as she does and seems more natural. There are not any prose dumps, but eagle-eyed viewers should keep their eyes open for hints from television screens and billboards. She also sees people that could not possibly be there. Diegetic sounds also reveal clues, but the soundtrack has a ticking clock. Pay attention to when you hear it.

I can be hard on movies with fathers and daughters even if the daughter is supposed to be the protagonist. The Light of My Life even made the point that the fathers end up taking a disproportionate portion of the plot such as Alita: Battle Angel or being more interesting than the daughters such as Crawl. Freaks manages to keep its focus on Chloe while having a riveting theme about fathers loving and trying to protect, but failing, strong daughters not because of their inadequacies, but because of their daughters’ free will.

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If you liked Logan, Freaks is a more realistic, gritty view of what it would be like if people with powers were on the run and outlawed except genocide is definitely on the table and separation of children from their parents is a practical goal to have a weapon of mass destruction. I do not automatically like movies or television series just because the characters have powers. I am actually getting a little tired of it because some of these works lean more on the powers and special effects than character development, but this film prioritizes showing them as people before revealing their powers.

While our sympathies are with the underdogs, and the powers that be are definitely repugnant in the way that they dehumanize and use people who are different, it is reasonable to fear Chloe. Her poor dad! She terrorized her neighbors like she was the head child in The Children of the Corn. When the neighbors finally get to truly interact with Chloe, their disgust is visceral and understandable. Hirsch’s horrified reaction mingled with unconditional love works seamlessly. To be fair, she is a kid and has zero understanding of what she is doing. The boogie (wo)man in the closet is her mom. Chloe does not see dead people thankfully.

There are no perfect characters in Freaks. Dern’s character is using a kid and is initially suspicious as hell. Our first impression of the father could be viewed as abusive, not protective.

Freaks waits almost one hour before truly busting out the CGI and discovering others’ powers. Her grandfather can disappear and once was derisively called the Invisible Man. Her father can control time. Her mom is Supergirl. The effects do not exist to titillate and do not act as a substitute for character development, but to move the story forward. There is no grand theme of mutants either coexisting with humanity versus resisting. It is simply a family desperately trying to survive and reunite.

When you get to the part when Chloe deliberately tries to use her powers, Aleks Paunovic as a Mountain guard gets to exercise his acting jobs by convincingly acting as if a little girl has possessed him. Paunovic gets to be more than the usual tough guy. It is a tense scene because we are uncertain if the girl can sustain her powers and pull off what the adults could not, but it is also one that transfixed me because he was so good. The stakes get raised further when other people cannot use their powers. It leads to a lot of great interactions. It is understated, not flashy and even has humorous undertones puncturing the gravity.

The biggest bang for its buck is that Freaks constantly says that the mother was the most powerful one. It borrows a beat from Run Lola Run before we get to see her cook. The wait pays off and is a cathartic, satisfying bananas end. Yes, the movie may not hold any deep, broader message than the most powerful force of all, love, as a motivation for unleashing our power and compels us to sacrifice, but it never set out to tell a big story so I loved it. Once you know all the twists and turns, it may not leave you as stunned as the first time, but with a solid story and great acting, I highly recommend this film if you love sci fi. The Canadian filmmakers are carving out a nice character-driven space for themselves.