Writers: Christopher Landon, Michael Kennedy
Director: Christopher Landon
Production Company: Blumhouse Productions, Divide/Conquer
Country: USA
Year: 2020
Freaky Friday gets a serial killer slasher twist when Christopher Landon (the mastermind behind the two Happy Death Day movies amongst other things) turns his mitts to the idea. When the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn) uses an ancient Aztec knife on shy teen Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton), prey and predator switch bodies. Now there’s only 24 hours to go before the butcher is in Millie’s body forever, free to go in disguise and get slash happy whenever he pleases.
This is, of course, a concept which could be absolutely incredible or absolutely awful. Thankfully, Landon has had enough time to hone his slasher powers (the HDD movies are a rare example of the second instalment in a slasher franchise being superior to the first) to craft a wonderfully entertaining film. As much an homage to Scream as it is to Freaky Friday, the writing is nice and slick (save for, as others have rightly pointed out, some of the dialogue, which is exposition-laden and blandly functional), paced nicely, and never stalling to do a character bit for too long before going back to the slasher stuff. Everything plot-wise feels as organic as you could realistically get it, and whilst nothing is as maniacally terrifying and tense as it should be, the black comedy tone makes up for it in spades.
Both Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton are pitch perfect, and the film might not have worked as well as it does without either of them. Both are able to play both Millie and the Butcher ridiculously convincingly, and Vaughn’s moment as an unlikely final girl is as incredible to watch as you think it would be. It’s clear they had an absolute blast working through the characters before and throughout shooting, and who wouldn’t? Though these two take the centre stage, everything else manages to hit its mark a good 90% of the time to boot. The score is fun, the cinematography good (aka, even in the dark, you can still see stuff), all the other actors pull their weight.
There’s some stuff in there about absent father figures and a lot (obviously) about gender and sexuality that you can pull out your academic textbooks and get dissecting, but the film never makes this front and centre, and thank the heavens. In the end, it’s just a slasher flick with a twist, some decent plotting, a few nods to other films here and there, and it’s sheer entertainment from beginning to the final reel. Sometimes a slasher flick, especially in the modern era when that nonce of a term ‘elevated horror’ suggests that horror should be serious and introspective, sometimes a slasher flick just needs to be fun. Thankfully, Freaky is a hell of a lot of fun, and the world is better for it.
Rating: 8/10
KJudgeMental 