Freaky (2020)
Freakiest Friday
This is the final Cheap Movie Tuesday in October, the month where we focus on weird and bad cinema that causes fright!
Today’s cheap movie asks you to recall your most unpleasant high school memories, be they bullying, isolation, being festooned with acne, being bored out of your mind or being decapitated in shop class via bandsaw accident or ‘accident’.
Students stuck in these awful circumstances often see the adult world as a comparative paradise where you can be who you want to be, move towards the subjects (and people) that you like and move away from the ones you don’t.
This is probably why there is a frequently recurring plot in Hollywood movies about a teenager and an adult switching bodies, usually parent and child. The teenager is forced to navigate the world of adult responsibilities. The adult gets to experience just how much it sucks to be in high school.
There are several movies with this premise, but the most famous is easily Freaky Friday, both the Barbara Harris/Jodie Foster version from 1976 and the Jamie Lee Curtis/Lindsay Lohan version from 2003.
Freaky, a film written by Michael Kennedy and Christopher Landon, is a movie that takes the formula and alters it a little.
The protagonist is an awkward teenage girl who winds up switching bodies, not with her mom, but an indestructible serial killer.
Surprisingly, it’s kind of touching, not a comment I usually make about films where people get murdered with tennis rackets, wine bottles and toilet seats.
The Plot: At a famous archeologist’s home, teenagers are hanging out, doing what teenagers do in slasher films, hitting on each other, drinking hard liquor and telling ghost stories.
One particularly foolish teenager jinxes the evening by telling a ghost story about a slasher who wants to kill everyone but especially teenagers. Not long afterwards a masked behemoth known as the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn) breaks down the door and kills everyone horribly using sporting goods and household appliances.
On his way out, the Butcher steals a MacGuffinish antique dagger.
The next day, news of the killing breaks and all adults in town are in a panic, but for the teenagers at Blissfield Valley Highschool, it’s just another day. Awkward Millie (Kathryn Newton) copes with cheerleader bullies, a mean shop teacher (Alan Ruck) and her secret crush on Booker the quarterback (Uriah Shelton).
As Millie waits for a ride home from school, she’s attacked by the Butcher who stabs her with the MacGuffinish dagger and suddenly the two switch bodies.
Millie, who is now played by Vince Vaughn, flees in terror.
The Butcher, now played by Kathryn Newton, lies on the ground in shock until Millie’s family arrives and drives her home.
Now Millie must evade the police and convince her friends, that’s she’s a terrified girl trapped in the body of a 250-pound wanted murderer, while the Butcher gets to continue his killing spree disguised as an innocent sophomore.
I wanted to see Freaky because of its bonkers plot, but what I wound up enjoying was the performances.
Everyone in this movie is amazing. Celeste O’Conner and Misha Osherovich are very funny as Millie’s best friends, Nyla and Josh.
Kathryn Newton does an impressive job playing a highly resourceful serial killer and continuously holding the unnervingly simple facial expressions of someone used to wearing a mask all the time
But the movie belongs to Vince Vaughn, who at 6’4”, is hardly built to play a frightened teenage girl, but pulls it off, flawlessly.
Freaky is a very rare sort of film. It takes the premise of a slasher flick and then somehow transitions into a convincing comedy about a girl who manages to overcome her insecurities and help others while trapped in the wrong body.
And just when you’re about to forget the scary part, the Blissfield butcher claims another victim.
Tomorrow! (Oct 29): Please read my contribution to the Scarestack Society’s ‘13 Days of Michael Myers’. Appropriately, I’m reviewing the worst film in the franchise, Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Or is it the best one?
The Tea: If you’re watching a movie about body swapping that is also a scary movie and it’s close to Halloween, then maybe, just maybe you want to experiment with a freaky. tea
Surprisingly, there are quite a few teas rumored to assist with ‘astral projection’. The one that is cheapest, most available and doesn’t have ‘sudden death’ listed as a possible side effect is mugwort tea.
CAUTION: Mugwort tea usually causes lucid dreaming. Mugwort tea is not safe for children, anyone pregnant, anyone nursing, people allergic to ragweed, celery, birch or carrot, people who can’t drink things that taste horrible or people who drink things because they read about it on Substack.
The Snack: It’s Halloween, go buy some sugary fun-sized candy bars and go to town. Don’t be stingy, buy enough to share with anyone who knocks on your door.