The Underseen Freaky Put A Clever Twist On The Body-Swap Genre
The slasher makes the most of its high-concept mash-up.
Given the prominence of both properties and the shared word in their titles, it’s surprising that no one attempted to combine Freaky Friday and Friday the 13th before 2020’s Freaky. It’s also probably for the best, since someone else might have put together a weak comedy sketch rather than the clever and surprisingly affecting horror movie from director and co-writer Christopher Landon. Released five years ago today, Freaky offers a fresh take on the body-swap comedy that’s also a solidly constructed slasher movie.
Landon cheekily opens the movie with a giant “Wednesday the 11th” graphic, indicating that he and co-writer Michael Kennedy know what horror-movie conventions they’re playing with. Naturally, that’s followed by a group of teenagers sitting around a fire telling spooky stories about the Blissfield Butcher, a serial murderer who’s allegedly been slaying high schoolers during their town’s homecoming since 1977. The Butcher appears as soon as the teens split up, complete with a very Jason Voorhees-looking mask, and begins his latest murder spree.
So far, so basic. Landon and Kennedy have an ear for snarky dialogue, and the Butcher’s earliest executions are creatively gruesome. But what really kicks Freaky into gear happens the next day, when the Butcher (Vince Vaughn) attacks awkward high school student and beaver mascot Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton) following the big football game. Thanks to an ancient, cursed knife he swiped from the previous murder scene, the Butcher inadvertently switches bodies with Millie, and they have only 24 hours before the swap is permanent.
Having the murderer and the final girl swap bodies allows Landon to subvert slasher-movie clichés while also making the best of the subgenre’s familiar elements. It doesn’t take long for Millie, in the Butcher’s body, to convince her two best friends of her true identity, so the core group of teens can unite to take down their enemy. It’s just that one of those teens happens to be a middle-aged man who has to constantly hide from the police.
Vaughn’s Millie has no trouble reconnecting with her best friends.
There’s no way Freaky would succeed without Vaughn’s total commitment to the role of Millie, and he brings out the comedy without ever resorting to cheap jokes about teenage girls. Freaky is unexpectedly sensitive, because Landon and Vaughn treat the body-swapped Millie with the same respect as the original. She’s still shy and insecure, although inhabiting such a strong, intimidating body gives her a boost of confidence.
That confidence comes across when Millie has to face off against the Butcher, who’s taken advantage of Millie’s unobtrusive presence to continue his murderous ways. But it also comes across when Millie is having a heart-to-heart talk with her longtime crush, Booker (Uriah Shelton), which the movie plays with earnestness. For Booker, Millie is the same person no matter what body she’s in. Freaky doesn’t dwell on its message of inclusivity, but the movie’s sly perspective on gender performativity pervades the ridiculous story.
The Butcher gives Millie’s body a new femme-fatale style.
Although he remains laser-focused on slaughtering people, the Butcher turns out to be better at playing a teenage girl than Millie ever was, and Newton expertly conveys the contrasting personalities. The Butcher’s chosen look of a leather jacket, ponytail, and ruby red lipstick turns heads, and the more he glares and throws insults, the more the meathead jocks seem to be drawn to him.
Those jocks all wear letterman jackets, and Millie’s high school may be the only one left in America with a functioning woodshop. Those somewhat outdated all-American signifiers place Freaky firmly within the slasher tradition, and Landon never lets the movie stray too far from its sturdy formula. The Butcher may be a reprehensible psychopath, but it’s hard to feel too bad for most of his victims, who are self-centered misogynists and homophobes. Or maybe they’re just never given the chance to grow beyond their immaturity.
Millie does get that chance, and like most body-swap movies, Freaky bestows its protagonist with some life lessons from her time spent in someone else’s place. Those lessons involve lots of brutality and bloodshed, but they’re just as valuable as anything the main characters of various Freakies Friday took away from their experiences. Being a final girl and a body-swapper turns out to be not so different after all.
