Freaky

Freaky is a certainly a good idea from Blumhouse Pictures… and an interesting possible ongoing angle for future horror flicks from the studio. Previously they had released Happy Death Day which combined a slasher film with a time loop flick. Now, they have combined a slasher film with a body swap comedy. And by naming it Freaky, you know they know their film history… especially when most of the movie takes place on a Friday (the 13th).

So Freaky is about a small town with its very own masked slasher who kills during Homecoming. That slasher (played by Vince Vaughn) has his eyes on a teen girl played by Kathryn Newton. But when he catches her, razzle-dazzle-rootbeer, the next thing you know they have swapped bodies… the grizzled serial killer now in the body of the socially awkward teen girl and the teen girl in the very large intimidating (and stinky) body of the older man.

So the film knows its body swap joke standards and it also knows that it’s a horror comedy and gets plenty of material out of the two actors playing each other. I think Kathryn Newton does a better job of playing two different characters but that’s probably because I’m more familiar with Vaughn as an actor. To me, he kind of just plays generic teen-girl-in-middle-aged-guy’s-body… which he’s certainly good at and it’s amusing. But she turns on a whole other creepy vibe… whether that’s anything like Vaughn, I don’t think so but it’s certainly a good acting job if the goal was to be creepy (or freaky).

I was enjoying the movie plenty for the first half… but something happens shortly after the body swap and the movie just kind of starts winding down. I think it uses up all its good ideas in the setup and reveal and has nowhere interesting to go in its resolution. But it’s a pretty good try and probably teens who haven’t seen it all before and super fans of body swap comedies will enjoy it.

Score: 72