EIFF 2013: We Are the Freaks

Film Review by Josh Slater-Williams | 23 Jun 2013
Film title: We Are the Freaks
Director: Justin Edgar
Starring: Jamie Blackley, Sean Teale, Mike Bailey, Hera Hilmar, Rosamund Hanson, Michael Smiley

Following three teenage friends on a night out in 1990, after Thatcher has just stepped down, We Are the Freaks opens with self-reflexive narration that posits that “this is not a teen movie”; this follows an opening tirade that includes the lead expressing contempt for films where people talk to camera, right after doing so himself. It’s a film that, through meta stylistic tics (“Got any music that won’t be in wanky nostalgic films in 20-years time?”), constantly draws attention to itself; the problem is that it never provides anything to warrant the viewer’s attention.

Filled to the brim with witless non-sequitur humour, the film is simultaneously inert and annoying in its excessively stylised portrait of uninteresting, insufferably-written characters; every trick that could be used is – a point especially highlighted by a chip shop brawl shot like Oldboy. Its finale mocks the notion that characters in teen coming-of-age films might actually learn something; a final sour note in a very smarmy film.

We Are the Freaks screens at Edinburgh International Film Festival

22 Jun, 21.10 @ Cineworld 8

23 June, 13.00 at Cineworld 5