Mark Reviews Movies: FREAKY

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 12, 2020

Christopher Landon, who co-wrote and directed Freaky, currently seems set on an admirable path: to play with the horror genre by infusing it with comedy and, more importantly, by twisting an established high-concept premise to serve as the foundation for a horror tale. Previously, he made two movies—an original and its sequel—about the victim of a slasher experiencing the day of her murder over and over (and over and over) again, as she tries to discover the identity of her killer. In this one, he and co-screenwriter Michael Kennedy use the established concept of body-swapping. The potential victim of a locally legendary serial killer finds her soul or consciousness transplanted into the murderer's body and vice versa.

It's a solid, dementedly amusing concept, and if Landon and Kennedy seem to coast a bit too much and for a bit too long on the basic cleverness of their central idea, that's also a bit forgivable. We're invested in the execution—maybe not because it pays off in a wholly satisfying way, but because we keep waiting for the promise of the conceit to be fulfilled. It gets close, especially in the movie's climactic chaos.

The story has Millie (Kathryn Newton), a quiet and reserved teenager, still grieving the death of her father a year ago. Her mother (played by Katie Finneran) has started drinking to dull the pain, and her older sister Charlotte (Dana Drori) has lost herself in work as a local cop.

Meanwhile, Millie is just shy of a complete outcast, bullied by classmates and even a teacher, with only her friends Josh (Misha Osherovich) and Nyla (Celeste O'Connor) to maintain what little confidence she has left. Millie has a crush on Booker (Uriah Shelton), a kind-hearted jock who's nice to her. She also wants to go to college the following year, but Millie worries about leaving her mother alone.

On the flip side of the swap, we meet the killer, known only as the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn). After decades of murder, he seemingly disappeared in the 1990s, becoming little more than an urban legend. In the story's prologue, four teens discover that the Butcher is very real (and slightly creative in killing, if the uses of a toilet seat and a bottle of wine are any indication). In the aftermath of the carnage, the murderer finds and steals an antique dagger.

The dagger, obviously, has supernatural powers. They're unimportant, except for the fact that, when the Butcher fails to kill Millie, the full moon becomes covered by clouds, the ground opens to reveal an ancient pyramid, and there's some connection made between the murderer and his target. The Butcher flees. Millie is safe.

The next morning, though, each of them wakes up confused. Millie's consciousness is now inside the Butcher's body, and the Butcher finds himself with the perfect disguise, Millie's body, to infiltrate the teenage population and kill as many as he can.

Landon and Kennedy don't waste much—if any—time on matters like the mechanics of the dagger's powers or allowing the main characters to realize what has happened to them. The screenplay pretty much gets right into the wicked core of the premise. The Butcher, as "Millie," hovers near Charlotte with knife, and almost as soon as the idea of "Millie" going to school comes up, the supernaturally disguised serial killer is already plotting to kill a student—conveniently, one of the real Millie's usual bullies (The filmmakers make sure all of the victims here are repugnant in some way: the school gossip, an unnecessarily cruel shop teacher who's amusingly played by Alan Ruck, and a trio of jocks who threaten "Millie" with a sex crime, for example).

This side of the story gives us the horror element, of course, as Landon has "Millie" dispatch assorted victims in clever (a cryotherapy chamber), gruesome (a chainsaw), and cleverly gruesome (a table saw) ways. Newton, so vulnerably sweet as Millie, doesn't get much to say as the-Butcher-as-Millie, but her cold, hard stare is enough.

On the other side, Millie, as "the Butcher," is played entirely for laughs. The jokes are mostly obvious, as Millie learns the ropes of having a man's body and has to contend with people who don't believe she has transformed (The best friends, thankfully, figure it out quickly, after a funny brawl in the school kitchen). Vaughn's performance, while fully invested, comes across more as a generic teenage girl than what we've seen from and learned about Millie, but it's still generally funny. There's even a surprisingly touching scene between "the Butcher" and Millie's mother, as the teenager finally feels comfortable to console her mother—until the mother makes it incredibly awkward. There's some more awkwardness when Josh confesses his feelings for Millie.

The mash-up of this split premise—playing the body-swap for horror on one side and, on the other, for comedy, with more traditional setups and payoffs—doesn't quite come together in terms of purpose and tone. It often feels like two separate ideas, joined by a gimmick but pretty straightforward on their own. That sense does dissipate as Freaky approaches its climax, with "the Butcher" on the run and "Millie" planning a slaughter at an old mill. The promise of the concept finally pays off, but it's a bit too late.

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