Film Review - Freaky (2020)

Back in the 80s – yes, this writer always has to find some way to reference the decade of his birth/best decade of films – there were many fads and storytelling devices that were recycled over and over again but one that seemed to stick longer than perhaps it should have done was the body-swap comedy. Adults became kids, kids became adults, genders swapped, heck even in 1997 it was still being done – “It’s like looking into a mirror, only not…” There is something innately charming about telling stories that allow for reflection, whether growing pains, the trials of adolescence, or the desire to live out your younger days one more time, and these comedies, as they mainly were, were able to dig deep.

The fad is resurrected again thanks to Christopher Landon, writer/director of the brilliant Happy Death Day and its superior sequel (yes, we said it) who switches from his spin on Groundhog Day by bringing us this dark, sinister, gory version of Freaky Friday, one of the first high-profile cinematic takes on the body-swap tale back in the 1970s. Heck, he has even taken the title for good measure.

But where the original purveyor focused on a mother and daughter switching bodies, Landon’s twist tells the urban legend of a local serial killer monikered the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn), whose latest bloody rampage has led him to a mysterious dagger called La Dola. Soon enough, he sets his sights on the local high-school and in a chance encounter with pupil Millie (Kathryn Newton), he stabs in the shoulder only for the inflicted wound to immediately appear in the same place on him and, as they wake the next morning, wouldn’t you know it…

Freaky is one of those ideas for a film where you think “Why has no-one this before?!” – at least, in this guise – and this good. Landon has made quite a name for himself for utilising then contorting the tropes and clichés of the horror film and blending them with the madcap, almost absurdist moments from high-concept comedies while the metaphorical plates are spinning above him. Here, with the body swap trope added in, he also has to deal with some of the more questionable underpinnings that go with having a male/female swap, treading even more delicately by modern standards but, smartly, there isn’t too much dwelling once the slaughtering begins.

Indeed, it doesn’t plunder the depths of the characters too much – especially the lure of the Butcher – which leaves it feeling very thin on the ground, but it does right by Millie’s story: struggling to come to with the mental and emotional cocktail of grief, bullying, and teenage angst, she yearns for change and while it isn’t quite what she had in mind, it strangely steers her in a new direction, aided by Newton’s ace central turn. And, of course, there’s Vaughn who is having a ball, bringing the cheeky, sarcastic flavourings of Wedding Crashers and Dodgeball together with the brutal underpinnings of Brawl In Cell Block 99. It isn’t a performance, nor indeed a film, that is heavy on subtlety or nuance but then no-one expects it to be. Want some laughs, scares, and lashings of the red stuff? You’ve come to the right place.