If you’re eagerly anticipating ‘Freakier Friday’, you won’t want to miss ‘Freaky’, a wild horror-comedy that puts a fresh spin on the body-swapping genre.
If You Can’t Wait for ‘Freakier Friday,’ This Hilariously Wild Horror-Comedy Take On the Same Premise Is Here!
The body-swapping subgenre is undoubtedly a weird one, requiring a major suspension of disbelief from the audience but also allowing actors to experiment playing characters of a different age/gender/identity, etc. One of the most notable body-swapping movies is 2003’s Freaky Friday, starring Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis, with its sequel, Freakier Friday, hitting theaters in August, over 20 years later. The body swap concept tends to work best when some level of comedy is involved, and 2020’s Freaky proves how well it works in horror too. Directed by Christopher Landon (of the Happy Death Day franchise), Freaky stars Vince Vaughn as the Blissfield Butcher, a serial killer believed to be an urban legend who suddenly reappears and inadvertently switches bodies with a local teen, played by horror comedy queen Kathryn Newton. Evoking teen horror comedies of years past but with a body-swapping twist, Freaky is a fun take on the subgenre and worth a watch to tide you over until the release of Freakier Friday.
What Is ‘Freaky’ About?
After the success of both Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U, Landon brought us another fantastical horror comedy with Freaky, trading in time loops for body swapping. Though Freaky didn’t perform quite as well at the box office compared to his previous two films — likely because it was released in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic — it’s another fun Blumhouse flick with plenty of references to classic horror movies of years past. It follows Millie Kessler (Newton), an awkward teenager who gets picked on at school by both her fellow students and her wood shop teacher, Mr. Bernardi (Alan Ruck). Her family life isn’t much better, as Millie, her mom, and her sister are still grieving their dad’s death nearly a year later.
Taking place in the fictional town of Blissfield, the first act of Freaky shares quite a few similarities with the first Scream movie, but things take a unique turn when the Blissfield Butcher, whose existence was debated and considered a myth, appears and murders four teenagers. Though this puts the rest of the town on alert, the Homecoming game still proceeds as scheduled and Millie, whose main extracurricular activity is dressing as the school mascot, is attacked by the Blissfield Butcher when her mom fails to pick her up after the game. He stabs Millie with an ancient dagger that he picked up at the house of his previous victims, inadvertently causing them to switch bodies. This leaves Millie trapped in the body of a grown man and the Blissfield Butcher trapped in the body of a teenage girl, which allows him to move through the world without suspicion and claim more victims at Blissfield Valley High. Millie, in the Butcher’s body, teams up with her best friends Josh (Misha Osherovich) and Nyla (Celeste O’Connor) to help her switch back before it’s too late.
Kathryn Newton and Vince Vaughn Make an Unlikely Horror Comedy Duo in ‘Freaky’
Freaky is an amalgamation of movie tropes, referencing horror classics like Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Candyman, along with its obvious allusion to Freaky Friday. These elements combine into a horror comedy that’s both funny and gory, with the Blissfield Butcher (as Millie) killing several of Millie’s tormentors, including a particularly gruesome death for Mr. Bernardi featuring a buzzsaw. Unlike with his Happy Death Day films, Freaky’s R-rating lets Landon take greater liberties with these violent deaths, which makes the stakes seem higher, even for a film with such a silly premise. What really makes Freaky work, however, are the performances from Kathryn Newton and Vince Vaughn, who pull off the body-swapping dynamic almost as well as Lohan and Curtis did in Freaky Friday.
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After having previously starred in Paranormal Activity 4, with Freaky, Newton really proved she could excel in the horror genre, especially in horror comedies, later going on to star in Abigail and Lisa Frankenstein. In Freaky, she starts out playing an awkward, unpopular teen trying to cope with the anniversary of her father’s death, but once she switches bodies with the Butcher, Newton’s demeanor changes completely. She seamlessly transitions into a cold, self-assured serial killer unencumbered by the anxieties that come with being a teenage girl navigating high school. Vaughn, on the other hand, is hilarious playing a teenage girl trapped in a grown man’s body, bringing the required amount of silliness to the role while still coming across as pretty damn scary before and after he switches back into being the Butcher. We really get the sense that Millie’s character is shining through, both in the funnier moments when she’s discovering her new genitals, and the softer moments when she’s talking to Millie’s mom and connecting with her crush, Booker (Uriah Shelton). Accidentally switching bodies with your mom is freaky, but accidentally switching bodies with a serial killer is even freakier, and both Newton and Vaughn make this horror-comedy a worthy addition to the body-swapping film canon.
Freaky is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video in the US.
