Freaky

Freaky feels like it takes Freak Friday and The Hot Chick on a wild ride in the vein of Scream and Return To Horror High, acting as a commentary on the concept as much as telling a pretty cool story with over-the-top comedic elements. From the outset, Millie Kessler (Newton) appears to be the prototypical final girl – nerdy, taunted, and cute if she just took off her glasses. Unlike Drew Barrymore, she is not featured in the opening minutes. Suppose you missed the trailer and have only a passing understanding of the film’s concept based on its title. In that case, you’d be forgiven for expecting her to make it through unscathed. When the first act reaches its climax, and Millie is left alone on the school’s grounds, the tension amps up– and it soon becomes clear that she isn’t as safe as genre conventions have led us to believe.

But then the twist happens, and you have to focus on what did occur during the film’s theatrical opening slash-fest. Freaky opens like most slasher films do, giving us a group of teens engaged in sex, drugs, and other debauchery while alone in a big house – only to see one or all of them die in excessively gory manners. It’s after the murderer, the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn), dispatches the last of these teens, and he grabs a trophy on his way out – an ancient dagger known as La Dola. This dagger is his weapon of choice when he stalks Millie, intending to make her his next victim. While Millie waits alone, the Blissfield Butcher chases her to the football field, where he then stabs her in the shoulder, causing an identical wound to appear on him.

This complicates things for Millie when she tries desperately to prove to her two best friends, Nila Chones (Celeste O’Connor) and Josh Detmer (Misha Osherovich) that she is not the Butcher. Kudos for getting both the black and gay best friends in there! Additionally, while stuck in the Butcher’s body, Millie must protect the people around her from the Butcher, who emphatically enjoys being in Millie’s body. For the first time in years, the Butcher is completely underestimated, allowing him to easily slash his way through the school.

Freaky goes out of its way to ensure that nearly every character who dies is almost completely unlikeable – making the attack on Millie seem completely out of place – if not for Sandra (Emily Holder). Whether it be an abusive teacher, three jocks who attempt to rape Millie (currently possessed by the Butcher, no less), or Millie’s legitimate high school bully, they seem to have few to no redeeming qualities. While this is almost always expected in horror movies focusing less on character development, it is an interesting choice.

It blurs the line between wanting to see the characters die versus seeing the killer fail. After all, there came a certain point in Halloween, Friday the 13^th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street where it became less concerned about having well-defined characters versus having interesting and unique deaths. Because they’d slot the characters into an archetype, some would be likelier than others, but by the third or fourth entry, are you really there to watch a character drama? That is not to say that Freaky made a mistake in treating the characters who ultimately ended up on the Blissfield Butcher’s bad side. With Millie’s attack earlier on, as the story focuses on the more likable cast, you are left to wonder just how much danger they’re in. Because it’s a slasher, anything can happen, but the pattern has been laid out with most of the victims by the time the main cast is in any true danger.

The major supporting characters include Booker Strode (Uriah Shelton), the boy Millie has a crush on – who goes through some things in the film as he acknowledges his feelings for Millie… while she is in the Butcher’s body. It’s a cute romantic arc in an otherwise hilarious slasher film, tackling gender identity in a nuanced manner. Char, Millie’s sister, is played as a capable cop stuck in the slasher genre with a supernatural element; granting her some grace is a given. At the same time, watching Char try and fail to catch the Butcher both before the switch and during it is utterly hilarious. Nyla and Josh, Millie’s two best friends, could have easily been left in the archetype of a Sassy Black Friend and Gay Best Friend. Still, both are given depth and play central roles in helping Millie figure out the crisis she has ended up in. Finally, Coral (Katie Finneran) is Char and Millie’s mother, a widow and an alcoholic, whose drinking herself to sleep resulted in Millie being left alone at the school in the first place. Unfortunately, Coral’s efforts to make up for the lapse are lavished on Millie’s would-be attacker instead.

Freaky was directed by Christopher Landon, who has become known for his horror-comedy films – most notably Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Happy Death Day, and Happy Death Day 2U – as well as his more straightforward horror fare, such as Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones and the upcoming Drop. With Kathryn Newton leading the charge, whether or not she will embrace the Scream Queen moniker is yet to be seen – but she certainly has the range. Finally, the film continued Blumhouse’s string of horror films. While it was not a box office smash, compared to its budget, it was a success, considering it was released during the height of the pandemic.