Freaky (2020) * *

 

Directed by:  Christopher Landon

Starring:  Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Celeste O' Connor, Misha Osherovich, Uriah Shelton, Katie Finneran, Alan Ruck 

Freaky is a horror update of the 1977 body-swapping comedy Freaky Friday which explores the same tired ground, only this time we add a body count.    In this instance, the Blissfield Butcher (Vaughn), once dismissed as mere urban legend, is on the hunt for teenage victims.   After slaughtering a few, he sets his sights on Millie Kessler (Newton), a pretty, but awkward teen bullied by the popular kids and a overly demanding shop teacher.   Millie is what passes for unattractive in this high school.  One night following a football game, Millie is left alone on school grounds awaiting a ride from her passed out, recovering alcoholic mother (Finneran).   The Butcher stalks her and after stabbing Millie with an ancient, glowing dagger, the two switch bodies.   The Butcher wakes up with Millie inside him, and Millie wakes up with The Butcher inside her.  

The obligatory scenes of the body-switching genre are fully intact.   Millie looks in the mirror to see she is not herself these days, and then feels her chest to discover her breasts are gone.   Millie heads to her high school, as the wanted Butcher mind you, to convince her best friends (O'Connor and Osherovich) that she is indeed inside the Butcher's body.   Why the high school remains open mere hours after a student was attacked there is anyone's guess.    The Butcher, meanwhile, goes to the same school to find new victims, including the popular girl who bullies Millie and winds up frozen to death in a cryogenic freezer.   Why this school would have a cryogenic freezer is anyone's guess.

It turns out the dagger has a special set of rules governing its use, and Millie will have to stab the Butcher again before the stroke of midnight.   If not, they will remain in each other's bodies permanently.   Isn't it always amusing how supernatural artifacts come with their own arbitrary user instructions?   There is one twist which is at least different from other movies of the genre:  Even though Millie is The Butcher, she is at least equipped with the hulking Butcher's strength, and The Butcher as Millie is limited to whatever strength her petite body could muster.   Millie also secures the assistance of her crush Booker (Shelton), to whom she confesses her love while inside The Butcher's body.   This of course leads to a kiss.  

Freaky checks off the horror cliches while attempting to kid them.   But the slayings in Freaky are as gruesome as the real thing, and it dampers any comedic effects.   One killing has a man cut in half by a table saw, which you figure would come into play when the shop class was introduced.   Another gets a hook to the eye.   At least there is very little blood, if that is of comfort to anyone.    Vaughn and Newton pull off the body switching nicely, and Vaughn provides whatever humanity he can muster as a young woman trapped inside a hulk.   Millie's mother's struggles with recovery and her cop sister also provide a potentially absorbing dynamic, if allowed to be fleshed out more.  

As someone who has seen slasher movies, their sequels, retreads, and even parodies, I think I've tapped out on the genre, but Freaky will surely be well received by the teenage crowd which hasn't been around long enough to know any better.