“What if Freaky Friday, but a slasher?” – some guy in a pitch meeting, probably.
Christopher Landon directed the two Happy Death Day movies, which were basically Groundhog Day, but a slasher, and they are both quite good. So is Freaky, which handles the mashup of comedy and horror with aplomb.
Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton) is an unpopular and constantly bullied teenager (despite being very pretty, relatively stylish, funny, smart, and plays the school mascot at football games) who is still mourning the death of her father one year ago.
After a game, her (alcoholic) mother “forgets” to pick her up (she’s passed out in a drunken stupor), leaving Millie alone after dark. She’s attacked by a serial killer called the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn), who stabs her with an ancient Aztec knife. This causes a body swap, and now Millie must stab the butcher with that same knife by midnight or the body swap will be permanent.
The specific plot elements of this film are pretty dumb. But the film doesn’t take them seriously. The joy of it is watching Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton play each other. Vaughn is especially a lot of fun. He gets a lot of mileage as a middle-aged man sporting a tall, bulky frame playing a small teenage girl.
Millie has a couple of sidekicks (played by Celeste O’Connor and Misha Osherovich) who provide a lot of banter and comic relief (some of which works, some of it doesn’t). The kills are clever and surprisingly brutal.
But really, the reason to watch this is Vaughn having a ton of fun and Newton getting to act like a brutish psycho killer in the body of a teenager.
themidnightcafe.org 