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When Christopher Landon directs a genre film, there’s always something delightfully geeky about it. Having written “Disturbia,” which expertly blended Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” with a troubled teen story set in the suburbs, Landon knows a thing or two about fusing recognizable horror-thriller tropes with Easter eggs from the past and a welcome side of black comedy. Despite the fact that Landon’s “Happy Death Day” sequel “Happy Death Day 2U” was guilty of veering too far to the side of ’80s comedy and abandoning the story’s horror roots, its accomplished “Groundhog Day”-meets-masked-killer predecessor (which Landon directed from a script by Scott Lobdell) was memorable for demonstrating Landon’s passionate dedication to the genre in enormously rewarding ways.
In fact, the enthusiasm stabs its way through “Freaky” with such tenacity that Landon’s latest outing comes across as overzealous in its attempts to blend together a body-swap farce and a high-school slasher with far too many allusions to classic comedies and horror staples of the past. It’s almost as if the filmmaker, like the rest of us, realized that “they don’t make ’em like they used to” and set out to recreate a little bit of everything, from the original “Friday the 13th” to “Freaky Friday” and beyond, in a single film that’s packed with familiar breadcrumbs and even features a vintage title card. “Freaky” suffers from this kind of widespread homage both as a flaw (the film is never quite as unpredictable as you would like it to be) and as a strength, as it is the main feature that endearingly caters to the nerds who enjoy such fare, which admittedly includes this critic. The movie “Freaky” is a lighthearted and nostalgic ride that delivers laughs as well as various inventively bloody kills, and occasionally even some 21st-century relevant observations on gender norms and sexuality. Simply put, don’t expect to be taken completely by surprise by it.
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One notable exception to the film’s on-paper obviousness is its pair of risk-taking performances by leads Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton (“Blockers,” “Big Little Lies”), both of whom have established themselves as consistently excellent young actors. With loud echoes of “Scream” echoing throughout the opening sequence, the former portrays the notorious (and, of course, masked) serial killer known in his sleepy town as the Blissfield Butcher, who sets the film in motion by murdering an unsuspecting group of teens in a gruesome opening sequence. The latter is Millie, a perpetually bullied outcast at her high school who is a smart, lovely, introverted girl who dresses in frumpy clothes. Millie, who lives with her sweetly worried single mother and her policewoman sister in a fatherless home that is almost Spielbergian in its bleakness, spends her days with her two best friends (Celeste O’Connor and Misha Osherovich, who both gracefully make the most of their clichéd parts as a smart bestie and a gay teenager, respectively), and obsesses over her crush (Uriah Shelton’s Booker), all while trying
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If you’re looking forward to seeing a murderous Vince Vaughn revel in his dark side for a while, you’re in luck. The mostly comedic actor always had a quietly sinister edge that movies never quite exploited, save perhaps for “Brawl in Cell Block 99” and, more notably, as Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant’s “Psycho” remake, has passed away. This is a film in which Vaughn spends the majority of the time hiding behind a mask and underwriting his character, until a body swap occurs between him and Millie after the Butcher injures the young woman with a mythical knife early on in the film. To Landon’s credit, he manages the quirks and pleasures of the body-swap formula admirably, and his actors are willing participants throughout the film’s running time. Vaughn, in particular, shines when it comes to physical comedy, convincingly portraying a teenage girl trapped in the body of a criminal who must race against the clock before the curse becomes irreversible. In a seductive leather jacket, with a fashionable high ponytail and red lipstick, Newton, on the other hand, wickedly swings for the fences as the new Millie, fully exploiting her girly looks, newfound killer moves, and instincts, and making a convincing case that she could one day become the next highly sought-after Hollywood action star, as seen in the film Millie.
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With a fast-paced narrative, attractive production values, and an unexpectedly moving emotional core about familial love, “Freaky” hits all the expected notes as Millie teams up with her schoolmates (in Vaughn’s body, to be clear), while also providing the audience with a few memorable gags and inspired one-liners along the way. “Freaky” is rated PG for language and violence. In spite of the fact that neither the horror nor the comedy genres are reinvented in “Freaky,” the film’s most notable achievement is the sense of glee it instills in the viewer that something so proudly old-fashioned can exist today without feeling out of date.
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