Freaky ⭐️½

Freaky – R – 1 hr 42 min
NO SPOILERS Movie Review
Watched in theater Thursday November 12, 2020
AMC Lakewood 12 – Lakewood, Washington
#44 new movie seen in theater in 2020

Descriptive title for this Vince Vaughn odd performance. It could also use “awkward” which would define several key scenes.

If you told me Vince Vaughn would play a Jason Vorhees like slasher and a Freaky Friday like switch role with a high school girl, I’d say “please, no” and yet here he it is. As we might guess, he does the comedy portion of the role good but struggles to be convincingly menacing when the role requires.

The story is fairly convoluted. Millie has a wino alcoholic mother and cop sister. She’s trying to fit in at school but isn’t one of the popular girls. As the school mascot she is ridiculed. One night she waits for her mom to pick her up, but she’s too drunk and passed out to care, leaving her victim to a psycho slasher (Vince Vaughn). As he goes to stab her with an enigmatic dagger lightning flashes and they swap bodies. Millie is now inside the slasher’s body and he’s inside hers.

From there the story runs a pretty familiar course for any other slasher with the only real change being the body swap gag. There is also a race against time subplot because if Millie can’t restab herself within 24 hours, she’ll be forever stuck in her new body.

Nevermind asking yourself why stabbing someone with an ancient Aztec dagger would cause a body swap, but the film can’t quite decide what its going to be about. Is it about Millie trying to gain revenge on those who wronged her? Is it the serial killer using the cover of the new body to commit more murders or is it the suspense of will or will not Millie get her body back?

Leaving the theater, we weren’t exactly torn on our feelings, but I happened to enjoy the quirkiness of this more than Kara, but it is still a pretty bad overall movie. She pretty much hated it.

If you’re looking for something that makes you feel more odd than entertained, this might be your fix, but we can’t recommend wasting any money seeing it in the theater.

Rating (out of 5 stars): ⭐️½ (Todd) ⭐️ (Kara)

Opening 11-12-2020 in Theaters: Freaky

Theaters: 11/12/2020

Wednesday, week #46 of 2020 (11/12 – 11/15/2020)

This week a sliver of good news was delivered for movie theaters in that a vaccine from Pfizer has received 90% effectiveness in early testing (see: Bring On The Anti-COVID-19 Vaccine that’s 90% Effective, And That Nasal Spray, too, if It Works). It’s still months away for most of us, maybe as much as six months or more, but it looks to be on the fast track to approval.

On a negative note, Regal Cinemas closed again the New York and California movie theater locations, leaving #1 chain AMC and #3 chain Cinemark open in many areas across the United States. Also negative came from Disney in December (see: Another Blow To Theaters From Disney: Free Guy and Death On The Nile are Pulled from December Release)

We are AMC Stubs A-List Members, paying roughly $22/month each and can see 3 new movies in any format at AMC every week. We’re also Regal Unlimited members, but that subscription is on hiatus until Regal theaters reopen. We’ll likely only keep one of the unlimited movie theater plans, but for now we’re only paying for the one that’s active.

Freaky
[FIRST LOOK]

This week Blumhouse is treating us to Vince Vaughn playing a woman trapped in a serial killer’s body. It’s a black comedy horror. We have tickets reserved for Thursday, but the official release date is Friday The 13th: 11/13/2020.

Yes, looking forward to seeing this one. It looks potentially a little silly, if I’m being honest, but we both think it might be fun to watch.

Anticipation: 7/10

Are you looking forward to seeing? Wherever you are watching movies, happy watching to you!

FIRST LOOK: Freaky

Theaters: Nov 13, 2020

Vince Vaughn has been showing his acting versatility. He does more than the sarcastic comedy role. I was a bit surprised — in a good way — by the brutal nature of his participation in Brawl In Cell Block 99, and now he’s starring in a horror-comedy vehicle from Blumhouse called, Freaky.

…can’t say director Christopher Landon doesn’t have a vision. With Happy Death Day and its sequel, the filmmaker mined a comedic concept for horror (without excising the comedic component). Now, he’s doing it again. Freaky takes the body-swap gimmick popularized by Freaky Friday and asks what might happen if a bullied teen girl switched bodies with a hulking serial killer.

Freaky trailer: Freaky Friday, but horror

The official trailer:

Character running from slasher says, “You’re black, I’m gay, we are soooo dead!”

This looks pretty entertaining and the release date, although happening after Halloween, seems well-placed.

Blumhouse, at least from attempts (not always execution) is just knocking it out of the park with horror subgenres, remakes, anthologies, they’re all over the horror map making the studio a name to reckon with in the space. Looking very forward to seeing this one, you?

Freaky is opening wide in theaters on Friday the 13th, November 2020