3+1 Short Paragraphs: Freaky

 2020, Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day) -- download

I was always fond of the Body Swap trope begun all those years ago with Freaky Friday, back when I would watch it via The Wonderful World of Disney on Sundays at my grandmothers, a welcome respite from the "don't sit there! don't touch that! don't eat those!". And seeing that this movie was done by the same guy as Happy Death Day, I was looking forward to another quirky, fun twist on a familiar genre set piece. Alas, it was a very tired example.

Vince Vaughn is a classic slasher-serial-killer-in-a-mask who likes to kill teens, the Blissfield Butcher. Millie is a bullied highschooler who almost ends up being his next victim, when he stabs her with the ancient dagger he stole during the opening setpiece murders. FLASH! BANG! Millie passes out and the Butcher runs off. The next morning, Millie awakens in an abandoned factory in Vaughn's body, while the Butcher wakes up and immediately plays with his new teenage girl boobs. Snicker; yawn.

The rest of the movie is about Millie's friends running around with Vaughn's girl trying to revert the two to their original bodies, while the Butcher has fun slaughtering the highschool kids from within, after sexifying up Millie's body, a sort of over confident honeytrap. The movie leans heavily into its gore and body count, with some meagre laughs at the expense of horrible teenagers just being horrible teenagers, but did they really deserve to die? 

To be honest, I wasn't as under-enthused watching the movie, as I am writing about it. Kathryn Newton, as Millie, has a ton of fun playing an angry, murderous girl and it is fun to see a little more thought behind the usually silent, masked slasher villain, as s/he has to maneuver their new environment trying to reap (pun intended) the most benefits from their obviously physically weaker body. But Vaughn was a major disappointment playing a young girl in a middle aged body, flopping his hands about loosely, and talking all whiney. Newton should have coached him more on how to play her. The movie is a fun romp, but felt lacking in many ways.