Saturday 14 November 2020

Freaky (2020)

Freaky mashes the Freaky Friday concept (a teen swaps bodies with an adult and they have to live as each other for a period of time) with slasher film conceits. It is, as popularity described, clever and funny, but I’m not sure it really does more than just recycle the slasher cliches by adding the new gimmick. To be fair it is fun but t is still rather predictable and very much exactly what you would expect.

Perhaps the build up to this film made me think it would be a little more subversive, like a modern Scream, attempting to deconstruct the genre a bit. It is definitely not that. It is standard slasher comedy. It is good for what it is, but it never tries to be more. And that is fine as fans of the genre will likely have a good time, well fans who want to get exactly what they would expect. 

Both Vaughn and Newton have fun with their role swapping parts. Vaughn should get credit for avoiding the pitfalls the script throws at him. He’s acting like an 18 year old girl and it would be easy for this to get rather sexist (and honestly homophobic) in the portrayal, especially in an awkward scene where he kisses the 18 year old boyfriend of Newton’s character. But he manages to avoid falling into stereotypes despite how much the script seems to want that

So Freaky is rather light fun even if it ends up being a big forgettable. 

Freaky
Starring: Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Alan Ruck
Director: Christopher Landon
Writers: Michael Kennedy, Christopher Landon

 

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