Motern Media -- Matt Farley and Charles Roxburgh -- make movies that seem to be horror on the outside but are wonderfully strange movies on the inside, explorations of the darkness -- and light -- within small towns. Like here, in a small New Hampshire town, Farley Wilder (Farley) is the son of talk show host Rick Wilder (Kevin McGee), a near-universally beloved celebrity who spends his days ridiculing his son and forcing him to take constant tests.
Freaky Farley lost his mother at a young age and never found out why; that combined with how his father treats him -- this is a comedy, even though everything in this sentence seems horrific -- has left him stranded in adolescence, through puberty but still afraid of women, often just peeping around town yet not meaning anything wrong by it. He might have a love interest in Scarlet (Sharon Scalzo), who wants to be a reporter, if his father didn't hate her. And oh yeah, the town also has a witch (Steff Deschenes), bullies like Air Force Ricky (Kyle Kochan), a ninja (Roxburgh) and woods that are so dangerous that Farley's dad won't even talk about them. Surprise -- they're filled with troglodytes.
There's a dark omega to even town's light alpha, the kind of clandestine meetings that find a young killer getting conscripted into battling prehistoric cave people. Or maybe there are just bribes in your town, I don't know.
What I do know is that this movie is just right. It hits all my buttons -- low budget horror as the Halloween mask under which a funny yet dramatic movie with heart beats inside -- and made me laugh out loud at least twice. That's more than a win.
Freaky Farley lost his mother at a young age and never found out why; that combined with how his father treats him -- this is a comedy, even though everything in this sentence seems horrific -- has left him stranded in adolescence, through puberty but still afraid of women, often just peeping around town yet not meaning anything wrong by it. He might have a love interest in Scarlet (Sharon Scalzo), who wants to be a reporter, if his father didn't hate her. And oh yeah, the town also has a witch (Steff Deschenes), bullies like Air Force Ricky (Kyle Kochan), a ninja (Roxburgh) and woods that are so dangerous that Farley's dad won't even talk about them. Surprise -- they're filled with troglodytes.
There's a dark omega to even town's light alpha, the kind of clandestine meetings that find a young killer getting conscripted into battling prehistoric cave people. Or maybe there are just bribes in your town, I don't know.
What I do know is that this movie is just right. It hits all my buttons -- low budget horror as the Halloween mask under which a funny yet dramatic movie with heart beats inside -- and made me laugh out loud at least twice. That's more than a win.