Freaks Out

I first encountered Gabriele Mainetti’s work through They Call Me Jeeg Robot, a gritty, Roman street-level superhero flick that felt like someone had injected a shot of espresso directly into the heart of a tired genre. So, when I heard he was following it up with a $12 million WWII epic about circus performers with superpowers fighting Nazis, I was all in. I finally sat down to watch it on a Tuesday night while wearing a weighted blanket that was slightly too heavy, making me feel as pinned down as the protagonists hiding in the ruins of occupied Rome.

Freaks Out is a colossal, shimmering anomaly. It’s a film that looks and feels like it cost five times its actual budget, yet it barely made a dent at the global box office. In our current era of franchise fatigue and "safe" intellectual property, this is the kind of bold, singular vision that usually gets crushed under the wheels of a Disney bus. It’s a drama disguised as a blockbuster, a fairy tale soaked in blood, and quite frankly, it’s one of the most imaginative things I’ve seen in years.

A Foster Family in the Crosshairs

The story centers on a traveling circus led by the Jewish father figure Israel (Giorgio Tirabassi). His "attractions" aren't just parlor tricks: Fulvio (Claudio Santamaria, looking unrecognizable under a thick coat of hypertrichosis hair) is a beastly strongman; Cencio (Pietro Castellitto) can control insects; Mario (Giancarlo Martini) is a "human magnet"; and Matilde (Aurora Giovinazzo) is an electric girl who can’t touch anyone without sparking a lethal charge.

When Israel vanishes while trying to secure papers to flee the Nazi occupation, the "freaks" are left rudderless in a city that wants them dead or caged. The core of the film isn't the spectacle of their powers—though that is handled with incredible finesse—but the crumbling family dynamic. Aurora Giovinazzo is the undisputed soul of the movie. Her performance as Matilde carries a crushing weight; she’s a girl terrified of her own power, grieving for her father, and forced to grow up in a world that views her as a subhuman curiosity. The chemistry between the four leads is palpable; they bicker like siblings and cling to each other like orphans, which, in the context of 1943 Rome, they effectively are.

The Prophet in the SS Uniform

Then there is Franz. If we’re talking about contemporary cinema's greatest "lost" villains, Franz Rogowski’s performance here belongs at the top of the list. Franz is a six-fingered Nazi pianist who runs a rival, opulent circus. He’s also a clairvoyant who experiences drug-induced seizures where he sees the future—specifically, the fall of the Third Reich and the rise of modern technology.

There is a sequence where Franz plays a haunting, melancholic version of Radiohead’s "Creep" on the piano in 1943 because he "heard" it in a vision. It is the kind of unapologetically weird swing that most directors are too cowardly to take. Franz isn't just a cackling villain; he’s a pathetic, desperate man trying to use "the four supers" he’s seen in his visions to save a regime he knows is doomed. His obsession with our heroes isn't just about power; it’s about his own validation as a "freak" who wants to be a god. Rogowski plays him with a twitchy, terrifying vulnerability that makes every scene he’s in feel like a live wire.

The Beauty of the Scrappy Epic

Technically, Freaks Out is a marvel. Michele D'Attanasio’s cinematography captures a Rome that is both historically grounded and ethereally heightened. The production design avoids the sterile, "too-clean" look of many modern digital epics. The costumes are frayed, the mud looks cold, and the special effects—managed by the same team that worked on various high-end European productions—are used to enhance the character beats rather than replace them.

The film does struggle slightly with its 141-minute runtime. There’s a middle act involving a group of disabled Italian partisans (The Hunchback and his crew) that, while fascinating, slows the momentum of the search for Israel. However, Mainetti uses that time to deepen the thematic stakes. This isn't just a "save the world" plot; it’s an exploration of identity and the "other." In a contemporary landscape where we talk endlessly about representation, Freaks Out uses the "freak" metaphor to look at the Holocaust and disability through a lens that feels urgent and agonizingly human.

The fact that this film didn't find a massive audience is a tragedy of timing and distribution. Released during the tail end of the pandemic’s disruptions, it was too "weird" for the mainstream and too "superhero" for the arthouse crowd. It exists in that beautiful, messy middle ground. It’s an R-rated X-Men movie directed by someone with the heart of Guillermo del Toro and the grit of Sergio Leone.

Freaks Out is a defiant piece of cinema. It refuses to be one thing—shifting from a whimsical circus opening to a harrowing depiction of a deportee train with a tonal whiplash that I found genuinely daring. It’s a film about finding family when the world is literally on fire, anchored by performances that deserve far more than the obscurity they currently inhabit. If you can handle the subtitles and the occasional burst of grotesque violence, seek this one out. It’s the kind of discovery that makes being a film obsessive feel like a privilege.

Mainetti has created a world that feels lived-in and dangerously tactile. By the time the final confrontation erupts, you aren't cheering for the "powers"; you're cheering for these four broken people to finally find a place where they don't have to hide. It's an epic that remembers the small, human moments are the ones that actually matter. It might have failed at the box office, but it succeeds in every way that counts on the screen.