Freaks is a compelling sci-fi that follows 7 year old Chloe who is played stunningly by Lexy Kolker. This little girl can act and carries most of the film. Freaks reminded me a little bit of 2015’s Room as this young girl is stuck in a dilapidated house. Her father is played by Emile Hirsh who warns her that she cannot leave the house or she will die. Hirsh’s performance is intense and both he and Kolker will easily hold your attention.

What I love about this movie is that it successfully gets you to ask question after question as the movie progresses. You naturally wonder within the first 10 minutes, “Is this dad crazy? Is he hiding something? Or maybe danger really does exist and if so, what is it? How did it get there?” Dad tells Chloe that if she’s ever discovered she has to take on a different identity and Chloe has all of this memorized. She knows her fake address, fake parents, and it’s all extremely suspenseful.

Some movies will have a premise but then it becomes so convoluted to where there’s no way to guess what could actually happen because everything feels so forced or convoluted. Freaks is grounded in reality because given these Sci-Fi circumstances that you learn about it feels like realistic choices that would be made by these group of characters.

Freaks gets us invested in the few characters it strategically focuses on and introduces us to its concepts in an engaging, suspenseful, and thrilling way. The pacing moves along quickly as there’s lots of back-to-back scenes of really interesting interactions. Bruce Dern plays an ice cream truck driver who entices Chloe into his truck– we as the audience have the thought, “Is this old man creepy and going to hurt Chloe?” The movie does a great job at getting us to guess what might happen and it subverts those expectations in a satisfying way.

There’s some sequences that feel dream-like involving Chloe and her neighbor and Chloe and her mom– these scenes felt a little bit confusing at first, but on second viewing make a whole lot more sense. Perhaps one scene where the characters talk about why this phenomenon occurs would have solidified to audiences what was happening in those moments that initially feel confusing.

Nonetheless, it’s one of my favorite movies this year and the most thrilling movie I’ve watched this year.