Freaks (R)
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This movie is described as a science fiction thriller. I think I'm a bit more likely to call it "paranormal" rather than "science fiction", but really it's a toss up between the two, it would be hard for me to choose one. Certainly it's a thriller, but I mostly try not to list sci-fi movies under that label. I watched it on Netflix in 2025, and one of the words that site used to describe it is "dystopian", and that's the category I'm most comfortable going with. Mostly the world in the movie is dystopian for people called "Abnormals", or more commonly (and prejudicially) as "Freaks". But anyone could be falsely assumed to be a Freak, and killed on sight. The movie is reminiscent of any number of stories where a group is seen as monsters and treated unfairly. The one that mainly springs to mind is X-Men, but there are surely others. And in fact, it's not too dissimilar to the reality of many minorities.

It begins with a 7-year-old girl named Chloe Lewis being raised in isolation by her father, Henry. He tells her never to leave the house, because there are bad people who want to kill them. He also tries to teach her to be "normal". And they have emergency plans, such as Chloe going across the street to be taken in by the Reed family, if anything ever happens to Henry. At first, if you weren't aware ahead of time of the nature of the movie, it could seem like Henry was lying to Chloe for reasons unknown. Perhaps he had abducted her? Who knows. But that's not the case. The fact is, both Chloe and Henry are Abnormals, each with their own paranormal powers. Henry can freeze time and create a bubble in which time moves normally. Because of this, to the outside world it has only been a few months since Chloe was born, but inside the time bubble that surrounds their house (as long as Henry is awake), it has been seven years. And the government really would kill them on sight if they were discovered. One of Chloe's powers is getting inside people's heads and making them do things. She's done this regularly to the Reeds' daughter, Harper, without Henry's knowledge. She also has the ability to appear in other places, sort of like astral projecting.

One day, Chloe leaves the house and talks to an ice cream truck vendor named Alan (Bruce Dern), who knows about her abilities. He claims his daughter, Mary, is actually Chloe's mother, whom Henry had told her was dead. But Alan says she's alive, and he wants Chloe to help him rescue her from a government facility where Abnormals are imprisoned. She doesn't immediately believe any of this, and doesn't even want to believe that she herself is a "Freak", despite her powers. So she forces him to take her home. But she leaves the house again another time, and Alan dresses up as a priest and takes her to meet a government agent of the Abnormal Defense Force, Cecilia Ray (Grace Park), saying Chloe had been left on his doorstep as a baby, and that now he wants Ray's help. (Really, he just wants to get inside the ADF's prison.) But things don't go well, and Alan has to turn invisible to escape with Chloe.

When Henry finds out what's been going on, he takes Chloe to the Reeds' house, but things go badly there, as well, and Mrs. Reed ends up calling the ADF to report them. Meanwhile, throughout the movie Chloe has been seeing a woman in her closet, who she thought was a ghost. But she eventually learns the woman is her mother, and that she's still alive. Chloe had unwittingly been using her power to appear in the room where Mary is being kept prisoner. And she learns that Mary is going to be killed. So she has to try to save her mother, all while the ADF is closing in on their house, with Henry stalling for time.

Well, I've left out lots of details and may have gotten some things mixed up. And I'm not going to reveal how it all ends. But it's a very powerful story. And it's not entirely clear that Abnormals are being completely unjustly persecuted. There's news footage of a city being destroyed by Freaks, apparently, though we don't get to know any details about that. And the Abnormals we do see get innocent people killed. But mostly you can't help but root for Chloe and Henry. Anyway... it's all pretty exciting and scary and compelling. I don't know what else I can say, I just really liked it.