“Freaky” Film Review

Freaky-movie-HD-Stills-5-1200-1200-675-675-crop-000000.jpg — 80/100 “sweet”

By: Keaton Marcus

Christopher Landon is back at ripping off classic comedies and putting them into a horror spin with Freaky, the new genre-bending comedy that pays homage to Freaky Friday. More R-rated and violent than Landon’s previous efforts, this is his best film to-date. From Vince Vaughn’s stand-out performance as a teenage girl, plenty of brutal gore, to consistent laughs, this is likely the most entertaining film I’ve seen all year. I walked into the film expecting a mediocre, occasionally enjoyable slasher film without any reason to justify its existence, but came out with a large smile on my face. Kathryn Newton is also solid in the movie, and both her and Vaughn were clearly at their best after the body-swap, and so was the movie. After a mostly poor first 15 minutes, the inciting incident is when Freaky gets to soar, and it flies far higher than expected. Despite some decidedly subpar screenwriting in moments along with a lack of creativity, this was a total blast, and I am looking forward to the filmmaker’s next movie.

Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton) is a high school student largely bullied by her classmates while desperately trying to get the attention of her crush, Booker (Uriah Shelton). When one night she’s left by her friends Nyla (Celeste O’Conner) and Josh (Misha Osherovich) alone after a football game, a man suddenly appears. This is the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn), a serial killer at large for recently brutally murdering four teenagers. Despite her meager attempts at escaping, she’s ultimately caught and stabbed with a mythical dagger called La Dola, which makes the two swap bodies. That’s right, the serial killer is now stuck in Millie’s body, and Millie is stuck in the killer’s body. After Vince Vaughn’s Millie convinces Nyla and Josh that the body-swap really took place, the three find out that they have less than 10 hours to stab Kathryn Newton’s Butcher, which can reverse it. I get it, the plot sounds terrible, but trust me, it’s supposed to be a parody of legitimately good films, and for that, it’s a damn masterpiece.

Although Landon’s script doesn’t give Newton’s character too much to do, I still really enjoyed her performance. As I mentioned, it all gets a whole lot better when the swapping happens, and it was hilarious to see the mind of an adult man in the body of a 5 foot 5 teenage girl. Of course it did remind me of Jamie Lee Curtis swapping bodies with Lindsay Lohan, but the film also added a creative aspect that was completely unexpected. Remember, this is a giant serial killer in a smaller, weaker body and we see the opposite for Millie’s character. That leads me along nicely to the best performance in the movie, which came from Vaughn, a talented actor who hasn’t had a big role in a while. Next to Jack Black in Welcome to the Jungle, I have started to enjoy grown men portraying teenagers, and this character also goes through somewhat of an interesting arc. We learn that Millie has always longed to feel strong and big, and in one intimate scene with her crush, she explains that being inside Vince Vaughn’s massive body gave her that feeling of badassery. It was a surprisingly touching moment, but if readers don’t care about all that deep stuff, you’ll get enough kicks out of it watching Vaughn do a cheerleader dance and play around with his penis. Both Newton and Vaughn did their jobs perfectly well while adding an interesting touch to their performances, and it payed off to the film’s benefit.

Christopher Landon has also proven himself to be a reasonably capable director, making Freaky a good-looking, slick and generally well-directed slasher comedy with some marvelously violent scenes. For the most part, I enjoyed the first Happy Death Day movie…It was a decent and fun diversion without adding anything special to the genre. It was the sequel that made me skeptical before seeing this movie. It turned the relatively simple and fun premise of the original and made it a convoluted science fiction mess with only some laughs. Considerably better than both of these movies is Freaky, both hilarious and creative on its own merits. You can throw tomatoes at the movie and call it a rip-off and a cash grabber, but it’s something more than that. One complaint I would have is the screenwriting, also by Landon, who wrote it with Michael Kennedy. It seemed on-the-nose and obvious, especially in the beginning, and it unfortunately failed to give Kathryn Newton’s character the spotlight. Thankfully, she’s a talented actress, and even without a good performance from her, Vaughn would have carried the movie on his damn back. I’m not calling this a cinematic masterpiece, but with all the shit that’s happened in 2020, Freaky is the movie I never knew we all needed.

The final opinion is: Despite predictable writing, Christopher Landon’s Freaky is thoroughly entertaining, well-acted and sharply directed that greatly benefits from often hilarious results from Vince Vaughn’s character situation…$PLURGE IT

Rated: R (for bloody violence, language and sexual content)

Genre: Horror/Comedy

Runtime: 1 hour 42 minutes

Directed By: Christopher Landon