Freaky may be the most fun that I’ve had at the movies this year. That may not be saying much in 2020, but this is still a damn fun horror/comedy and that is a difficult genre blend to pull off. Thanks largely to strong performances and clever writing, Freaky manages to be both one of the best slasher movies and funniest comedies that I have seen in theaters in a long time.
Writer/director Christopher Landon previously created the Happy Death Day movies, so the man has carved out the odd niche of blending slasher movies with popular comedies. While Happy Death Day was a slasher movie version of Groundhog Day, Freaky is a slasher movie version of Freaky Friday (in fact, it was originally titled Freaky Friday the 13th, but I guess that was too on the nose). A Jason Vorhees-style masked killer (played by Vince Vaughn) is chasing his latest teenaged victim (played by Kathryn Newton) when they suddenly switch bodies. Gory hijinks ensue.
The trick with horror comedies is that you need to be enough of both genres in order to work. If you go too far into the comedy, then you have simply entered the territory of parody. My biggest issue with Happy Death Day is that the PG-13 rating does not allow it to truly be a slasher film mixed with a comedy; it is more of a pure comedy built around slasher elements. That’s not true here, as Freaky is R-rated and not fucking around when it comes to the slashing. The opening 15 minutes are straight out of a Friday the 13th film, complete with some truly brutal kills (I give the film extra points for excessive use of a glass bottle as a weapon). Even once the body-swap has happened, the kills remain over-the-top in a gloriously 1980s kind of way. If there ever is another Friday the 13th movie (the rights have been held up in court for years), then I nominate Vince Vaughn as the new Jason. The man can play a damn good slasher, which is not something that I would have expected from him.
Once we get to the body swap, then the humor ramps up and it’s surprisingly funny. I appreciate that the film doesn’t dwell on many of the same jokes that inevitably pop up in these kinds of movies (though we do get the obligatory “girl pisses while standing up for the first time” scene), but focuses on the context of the specific situation. Vince Vaughn is frigging hilarious trying to run like a teenaged girl and not realizing his strength when he shoves one of his friends across the room. Kathryn Newton does an excellent job of transitioning her body language to reflect the change and some of the best humor comes from her discovering the pros and cons of going from a full-grown man to a teenaged girl. On one hand, she can get people to follow her quite easily. On the other hand, she often gets her ass kicked when she gets into a fight forgetting that she is now a hundred pounds lighter (one of my favorite moments is of her making a futile attempt to break down a door and screaming “this body is useless!”). I also want to mention the welcome, but rare, sight of Alan Ruck as the shop teacher (you likely know him better as Cameron from Ferris Buellar’s Day Off). It’s nice to see him in something and he gets one of the best deaths in the film, so good for him.
I could nitpick some things. There is an unnecessary epilogue that makes the film a touch too long. Some of the jokes are stale and obvious (the school’s mascot is the Beavers….ha). The explanation for the body swap is weak. But I was having a good enough time overall to forgive some of the weaknesses of the script. Freaky is fun as both a comedy and surprisingly gory slasher flick and is one of my favorite movies of the year. As for Christopher Landon’s next project, I suggest a slasher movie version of Multiplicity.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freaky_(film)#/media/File:Freaky_(film)_poster.jpeg
