‘Freaky’ violently botches a great idea
HANDOUT
There’s certainly an audience for extreme gore -- the kind of thing where a head gets split in two by an electric saw. If that’s your thing, OK. If you cringe at the description, or prefer to look away when something like that happens on screen, that makes two of us.
But “Freaky” wouldn’t seem so gruesomely indulgent -- shards of a wine bottle down the throat and out the neck, yeesh! -- if it felt like a story and not an outline. The concept is inspired; just when you thought body-swapping comedies had nowhere left to go after, I don’t know, “The Change-Up,” “Freaky” finds awkward high school mascot Millie (Kathryn Newton) switched with a hulking serial killer who happens to be played by Vince Vaughn and have no name other than Blissfield Butcher. Imagine the comic potential of a towering lunk like Vaughn (reportedly 6’5”, possibly 9’2”) flipping from sinister destruction to high-pitched confusion and terror.
After coming up with this good idea, director/co-writer Christopher Landon clearly was all tapped out.
So no matter how nice it is to see Vaughn having fun with comic material better than trash like “The Internship” or “Delivery Man” (not saying much, still worth noting), “Freaky” isn’t especially funny. And after the initial body exchange (due to an ancient dagger, don’t ask), Newton’s brief adjustment in the way she carries herself physically fades away behind glaring and the film’s refusal to detail the Butcher in any way. (Of course he’s happy to hide in plain sight as no one suspects this innocent-seeming girl of the increasing body count at the high school.) He wears a “Friday the 13th”-esque mask, and the movie opens with a sequence right out of “Scream,” but knowing who he is and what he looks like while learning nothing about him turns the character into a hole instead of a mystery. He’s underdeveloped before he is housed in a high school girl’s body, and afterward the movie is forced to avoid the discomfort of the questions it raises. In other words, it’s goofy for Millie, now played by Vaughn, to be curious about various aspects of her new body. It’s much, much different for the adult male killer, now played by Newton, to consider his physical changes. No one wants that, but it’s also a situation that writes itself into a corner for a movie that already stretches its tonal balance beyond control. Despite strong performances, “Freaky” underwrites almost every character (including Millie’s best friends, played by Celeste O’Connor and Misha Oshervish) and becomes a predictable revolving door of carnage, free of motivation.
It seems like this deadly mash-up of “Freaky Friday” and the slasher world would be an opportunity to examine horror tropes, but outside of the obvious awareness of an increased likelihood to be killed in a horror movie if you’re not a straight white man “Freaky” doesn’t particularly sing with self-awareness. What seems inspired becomes redundant and lumpy; this movie needs to move like Millie but feels heavy and shallow like the Butcher. Groan, squish.
C
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