Freaks – You’re One of Us
This movie steals its subtitle from the Tod Browning classic, but what we have here is actually a reverse Project Power. In the latter, a pill unlocks people's superpowers; in this one, people take pills do to suppress their superpowers.
Wendy (Cornelia Gröschel) and Elmar (Tim Oliver Schultz) stop taking the medications they've been on for years, decades even, and immediately discover that she has superhuman strength and he can generate electricity. Conveniently, neither experiences withdrawal symptoms. That is so not how drugs work.
Wendy and Elmar join forces with Marek (Wotan Wilke Möhring), whose role model seems to be Hancock (Marek is indestructible, which means that the filmmakers are not above ripping off even a Nickelodeon show); I’d say that this trio make the Mystery Men look like the Justice League, were it not that the Justice League is pretty pathetic itself.
The three take it upon themselves to set others like them free from their laboratory pison; this, plus the 80s soundtrack, is a transparent attempt to ride the coattails of Stranger Things. Their mission goes wrong and the triad have to escape under a downpour, but more on that later. While all this is going on, Wendy hides her powers from her husband but not from her son, with whom she has a relationship lifted right out of Unbreakable.
Considering the filmmakers’ absolute lack of originality and creativity, it's not surprising that the characters' powers don't include super intelligence. Wendy confesses to a non-existent affair to keep her husband Lars (Frederic Linkemann) in the dark; when the time comes to tell him the truth, he doesn't believe her because, even though she has been showing off her super strength all over town (in fact, her unbridled vandalism makes Dr. Stern (Nina Kunzendorf) — the de facto villain merely because she wants to get Wendy back on her meds — come across like the only sensible person in the entire film), she inexplicably refrains from giving him a simple demonstration.
Or how about Marek? He claims to have tried very hard trying to kill himself only to fail due to his indestructibility. Ok, he may be bulletproof, and fall-off-a-bridge-proof, and get-hit-by-a-truck-proof, but he presumably still needs to breathe; has it really never occurred to him to fill his pockets with rocks and take a long walk on a short pier?
Elmar, however, suffers the most from the sloppy scriptwriting. Wendy’s and Marek's powers are pretty basic, but Elmar would reasonably need time to learn to master his — and yet, this overly formulaic movie doesn't even bother with a training montage.
Elmar, who calls himself Electro Man (Max Dillon should sue him for gimmick infringement), is underwhelmingly easy to defeat; just put on a pair of rubber gloves and push him into a pool — which of course creates a plothole so big the Titanic could sail right through it: how come Elmar didn't short-circuit during the earlier downpour?