Freaky

Starring: Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Celeste O'Connor, Misha Osherovich, Emily Holder, Nicholas Stargel, Uriah Shelton, Kelly Lamor Wilson, Alan Ruck
Directed by: Christopher Landon
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy, Horror, Thriller
2020

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A high school student (Kathryn Newton) reluctantly swaps bodies with a deranged serial killer (Vince Vaughn) and must fight to change back before he kills again.

Review:
Tim: The premise of Freaky is actually fairly solid. It's not original, but it gives us an interesting twist on the "body swapping" plot. In this case, a mild mannered high school girl switches bodies with a murderer. It's all played for laughs, but it does generate some solid thrills also. While the idea was good, the execution is only average. That results in a movie that's decent, but doesn't offer quite enough for me to consider it a "good" movie.

The film's biggest strength is giving the cast something substantial to do. This is what I loved about the movie the most. Vince Vaughn makes for a believable sadistic killer, but he was able to show his range here by spending most of the movie acting like a teenage girl. He's able to do both of these believably well, which is quite impressive. Many of the film's funniest moments involve Vaughn acting in a very un-Vaughn-like way. On the other side, Kathryn Newton is equally as good. She seems comfortable playing the average, unremarkable high school student. Her transformation is fantastic, too. She had an easier task because much of her performance involves her staring stoically ahead, but she does small things with her body language and walk that tell the story she needed to tell. The hair and makeup team definitely get the assist in helping her. So, while Vaughn obviously had the more challenging task, Newton gives a strong performance as well. I really think she has strong talent and I expect bigger and bigger things from her in future years. Vaughn and Newton work well opposite each other and are undoubtedly the highlight of the movie.

The rest of the cast, not so much. I was a bit surprised by the step down in quality between Vaughn and Newton, and the rest of the cast. There weren't really any standouts. The cast was mostly decent, if unremarkable. I thought Misha Osherovich was awful. He was supposed to be "comedy relief" and had a fairly straightforward task. His performance felt too over-the-top (and the role was supposed to be over-the-top). He did it in a forced way that hit the wrong notes more than the right ones. He hurts the film. I wasn't overly impressed with Uriah Shelton, either. He was perfectly acceptable in the role, but I didn't see anything special in what he did. That's mostly true for the remainder of the cast, too.

Freaky does a few things right and it certainly does have decent moments throughout the film. It's genuinely fun to see Vaughn and Newton do their thing. However, the script ultimately lets them down. The movie is beyond predictable and follows the exact path we expect it to. While there's humorous moments, over 50% of the jokes don't quite connect. The movie has some gruesome moments, but it didn't feel like it fully leveraged its "R" rating. The supporting cast was a letdown. What these things do is blunt the effectiveness of the film. I was never outright bored by anything I saw, but when it's all so predictable, it's hard to get invested. I didn't feel any chemistry between Newton and Shelton. I never really believed Newton, Osherovich, and that other forgettable girl were actually friends (I honestly don't remember anything Celeste O'Connor did in the film). The mom and the sister cop were weak characters. This is all surprising because Christopher Landon did such a good directing Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U (Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones wasn't good, though). Still, while I know I'm hitting the negatives, it's because I really thought this should have been a good movie. It's not, but it's never bad- it's a perfectly decent movie that I mostly enjoyed watching. It does have its strengths, although ultimately, I wish it had been a bit better.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Happy Death Day, Happy Death Day 2U, Paranormal Activity 4, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, Blockers