The basic premise for Freaky is dumb, and if it had to exist it should have been fifteen years ago. And that’s not just because that would put it closer in time to the 2003 Freaky Friday remake, still the most popular version of the body-switch narrative on film in defiance of all odds and the existence of Your Name; but because the movie is to its core an early 2000s comedy, with all the same conventions in the script and direction, the comedy and plot contrivances, as well as character archetypes that may have even been outdated then -or are American schools really that cartoonishly cliquey?. In any case, as much as Freaky distinctly belongs to another time, it’s not chasing a relevant trend of body-switching movies or nostalgia, but rather a particular kind of gimmick-based horror comedy most obviously epitomized in the surprisingly successful time loop flick Happy Death Day. That films’ director, Christopher Landon, is behind Freaky as well, and it too is very much a “what if this one goofy sci-fi trope was in a slasher film” concept -not an idea that requires much creativity.
And that is reflected on screen as the movie throughout its’ plot adheres pretty closely to exactly the kind of scenes and points you’d expect from spilling a batch of Freaky Friday into your Friday the 13th recipe. From the teenage girl in the killers’ body having to adjust to his build, brute force, and appearance through a series of wacky shenanigans to the killer in the girls’ body using the relative inconspicuousness it brings him to his advantage, to a ticking clock and a maguffin to switch them back which is less racist than in Freaky Friday, but still kind of racist –it’s all there. Mixed in with this is a lot of really formulaic personal conflict of high school movies, such as a parent not understanding the protagonist and a flustered attitude towards a crush who she’s oblivious to the reciprocated feelings of. The only twist on these plot threads that Freaky can offer is the joke that lumbering, masculine fifty-year old Vince Vaughn is playing them.
Vaughn, who incidentally has actually played a horror movie killer before, is very much treading in the same water as his fellow Frat Packer Jack Black did in the two recent Jumanji movies, and like Black there he seems to be playing a different character to the one established by the age appropriate actress -though to a greater degree. It’s no secret why of course, Vaughn playing up a more stereotypical insecure teenage girl works better for laughs, but the consistency is not really there with the introverted, unassuming (even around her friends) version of Millie Kessler played by Kathryn Newton. More was needed to establish Millie’s personality, her sense of humour, and even her immaturity for the two parts to be compatible.
This is not on Newton though, who is maybe the movies’ strange saving grace, and who seems more comfortable as the killer, called the Blissfield Butcher, inside Millie’s body than Millie herself -not surprising given how much more fun this variation is. She delights in the sinister smirks and unsettling stares, as well as the more confident body language of this temporary inhabitant. And while the inconsistencies go both ways in her physical dexterity and her fashion choices (the Butcher just wears shabby thrift store clothes that smell, yet adopts a keen sense of style in Millie’s body), they work much better in this context because Newton isn’t performing it as schtick. In fact Freaky is kind of two gimmicky premises: apart from the body switching thing, it’s an exercise in ‘what if a slasher movie villain was a teenage girl’. And this side is done better, or at least more interestingly, partly due to the films’ commitment to the slasher aesthetic and its’ relative fearlessness when it comes to gore -there are at least a couple satisfyingly brutal kills, as obvious as they may be.
Of course they’re satisfying in part because the Butcher quite considerately only murders people who are terrible to Millie. And among at least a few of these targets there’s a common denominator of masculine power or sexual harassment. A team of jocks are especially obscene. And clearly Landon is trying to use this to turn the film into a kind of feminist power fantasy -as a girl viscerally gets revenge on the worst avatars of toxic machismo one could conjure up. But this theme is significantly undercut by the fact it’s not really Millie doing this, it’s the Butcher -someone who has never had that firsthand experience with systemic misogyny and is really only executing these terrible people on behalf of the women they would abuse.
On some level the movie may be aware of this, considering there’s a very awkward anticlimax once the main conflict has been resolved that seems purely there to allow Millie a vestige of this catharsis on her own -that and to echo the 2018 Halloween reboot weirdly enough. But it very noticeably doesn’t fit.
There are sides to Freaky that are entertaining. A comedy beat or sequence here and there that lands, or on occasion a performance. In addition to Newton, Misha Osherovich is also a highlight as Millies’ friend Josh. The jokes they’re called on to deliver aren’t always good (and in more than a few instances just play up to Josh’s gayness), but they have a lot of charisma and are impressively attuned to the comic sensibility, more so than it deserves. In the end though the movie falls short; not creative, engaging, or provocative enough to outshine the novelty of its concept, if just competent and loud enough to not be boring -that early 2000s trademark if ever there was one.
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