Metacritic reviews

At a time when horror can feel like a studio executive’s dumping ground for cheap work and attempts at genre-bending may make less business sense, it’s a thrill to see a director like Kostanski go for broke on an absurd pitch and take the execution as seriously as Ridley Scott would on a historical epic.

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

Built from the same little monster framework as stuff like the Gremlins and Critters series, Frankie Freako is an unapologetically weird, esoteric ride through a very particular kind of ’80s movie, complete with what feels like an absolute suspension of the rules of reality. That makes it, at minimum, refreshing, and at its best, wildly entertaining.

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

For better or worse, Kostanski's throwback creature feature wants older horror fans to feel like their childish selves again — as long as their childhoods were filled with Charles Band and Pee-Wee Herman.

Frankie Freako isn’t the film you’re going to rave about to friends. It will, however, be an excellent subject for conversation about how much films got away with in 1986. If you can watch this film through that lens, it’s definitely a freaky film you can appreciate.

At least Sweeney has good enough comic timing to make the thinly written dialogue sound vaguely amusing; he’s also adept at making his many reaction shots exaggerated just enough to tickle without descending into outright mugging.