Freaky

MOVIE #1,179 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 10.06.23 50 MOVIES IN 32 DAYS! From the mind of the guy who wrote the very bad 1998 Larry Clark flop Another Day in Paradise and the director of Paranormal Activity 5, comes Freaky, which answers the age old question: what would the family-oriented body-switching movie Freaky Friday look like as a slasher comedy? All kidding aside, Christopher Landon is the writer-director of the Happy Death Day movies, which are similar high-concept comic horrors that have been on my radar for awhile and after really enjoying this one, I definitely want to check them out now. (He’s also set to direct the forthcoming Scream 7.) Starting next week (on Friday the 13th!), I will begin my descent into the meat and potatoes of this year’s spooky month: what else? The entire Friday the 13th franchise in chronological order. So stay tuned for that!

But on today, this October’s first Friday, I decided to watch Freaky (2020) and I highly recommend it. There’s not much to say — it’s all right there in the logline — but this ultimately works because Vince Vaughn is perfectly cast as a serial killer whose body is taken over by the soul of a high school girl. It was jarring to see him take off the mask after the surprisingly gruesome opening kill sequence, but he quickly gets to the point (which is acting like a cute teenage chick). And it’s legit funny. I haven’t seen him in a lot of recent stuff (he’s not even featured on the movie poster) and I thought there was a chance he might phone in it, but he’s great. The other actors and elements all range from serviceable to pretty good and I appreciated that they leaned into the Hard-R horror when it came to the various slasher deaths (shitty woodshop teacher Alan Ruck gets sawed in half on a table saw, for example). This garnered decent reviews and was minorly successful for Blumhouse, but I think it’s one that’s destined to get a greater reappraisal at some point.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,178 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,180 ⫸

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Freaky is a 2020 American comedy slasher film directed by Christopher Landon, from a screenplay by Michael Kennedy and Landon, and starring Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Katie Finneran, Celeste O'Connor, and Alan Ruck. A twist on Freaky Friday, the film centers on a teenage girl who unintentionally switches bodies with a middle-aged male serial killer. Jason Blum serves as a producer under his Blumhouse Productions banner. It was released on October 8, 2020.