Freaky (2020)
(On Cable TV, July 2021) Considering my overall loathing of slasher movies, I approached Freaky with reluctance. A body-switching horror/comedy in which a young woman switches bodies with a serial killer? Eh… But once it gets going, Freaky gets more interesting than I expected. Much of the film’s success goes to a smart script, decent direction and excellent casting. This is not the first movie to play off Vince Vaughn’s size, but few have done it so well, and none has even made good use of both his potential for intimidation and his gift for comedy — by the time he plays a cheerleader in a massive body (which is most of the film — Freaky doesn’t spend all that much time with him as a serial killer), we get some unusual acting. This also goes for Kathryn Newton, playing a bulky man learning how to use a young teenager’s body. (The film’s much-better original title, Freaky Friday the 13th, sums up much of its premise.) The high school setting is almost used in interesting ways, with the script taking occasional pokes at the usual clichés. Freaky is also interesting that it is (one of?) the first body-switching film in an age of greater transgender acceptance, and that shows up in a few scenes that would not have been played the same way ten years ago. Some decent dialogues and characterization wrap it up (even if the camp gay character is a bit on-the-nose at first), although that’s not so much of a surprise coming from writer-director Christopher Landon, who seems to be carving a niche in spinning familiar premises into horror after the two Happy Death Day films. Where I reach my limit for my appreciation of Freaky is the choice to go equally hard on horror as comedy — there is a lot of gore here, and it does get in the way of enjoying the film as a romp. It also takes up one slasher cliché too many in adding a redundant climax-after-the-climax. But then again, you’d suspect a body-switching movie reviewer if I didn’t end up taking a few potshots at slashers in a slasher review.