Frankie Freako

Frankie Freako is designed to melt your brain. The only question is whether you might welcome such cerebral liquefaction or not.

While the film clearly plays as an homage to the kinds of kid-friendly, horror-adjacent comedies that ruled the ’80s, its charming commitment to a premise whose asininity borders on trolling makes Frankie Freako a distinctly 21st century product.

A self-consciously juvenile pizza party of a movie that's lots of fun if you don’t take it too seriously.

No substance.

With Frankie Freako, writer-director Steven Kostanski focuses exclusively on such ‘80s efforts as Gremlins, Ghoulies, Critters, Munchies, and any other franchise featuring malevolent creatures performed by puppets.

The nostalgia bait is strong with this one, but it works so why not. This is an entertaining bit of mayhem cinema and one that many will love.

Frankie Freako doesn’t quite reach the heights of “Iron Giant, but a gory inter-dimensional monster movie,” but it is an amusing take on the “little creatures” style horror movie that gave us such films as Gremlins and Ghoulies.

Everything that made Psycho Goreman such a fantastic and hilariously satiric throwback is absent here making the film no funnier than the Ghoulies, Munchies and Slimeball Bowl-a-Ramas it wants to emulate.

The joke is delivered by way of some genuinely inspired puppetry and some cheaply produced but cleverly devised digital effects.


If you can imagine 'Gremlins' having a torrid one-night stand with 'Drop Dead Fred,' this would be their love child.