“Freaky” knows that audiences have seen enough movies to accept its crazy setup, but it also realizes that the more characters discuss it on-screen, the lamer it seems - which explains why the characters start to behave in ridiculous ways as the film unspools, just to keep the plot from getting predictable. Vaughn busts out their secret handshake, which is a hoot, but the kind of joke that no one really wants to see repeated every time she needs to communicate her predicament to someone new. Take the scene in which Vaughn, who spends most of the movie “inhabited” by a teenage girl, tries to convince Millie’s two best friends, who are gay (Misha Osherovich) and Black (Celeste O’Connor) and acutely aware of their odds as supporting characters in a slasher movie, that it’s really Millie inside some random dude’s body. “Freaky” is technically a farce - that exaggerated genre so beloved by the French, so often exhausting to Americans, in which characters bumble their way through contrived comic situations - which may explain why Landon finds it somewhat unwieldy at times. Landon, who also helmed the gory “Groundhog Day” redux “Happy Death Day,” excels at both the sly comedic and high-style horror halves of the movie’s personality, though combining the two can be bumpy. In any case, the Butcher sees his transformation as an upgrade, giving him easier access to his preferred target - vapid teens - whereas it’s the previously insecure Millie who wants her body back. Good thing the Butcher is just a maniac and not also a pervert, or this movie might have taken a turn into very different territory. Newton’s casting makes more sense once the switch happens: When Millie wakes up Friday morning, she grabs the butcher knife in the kitchen and the red “Rebel Without a Cause” jacket from her sister’s closet and heads to school, ready to reinvent herself. The Butcher’s next victim, Millie, is meant to be a wallflower, which is kind of a stretch for Newton, who played the awkward friend in “Lady Bird” but comes across like one of the popular girls in this configuration (she nervously fingers her hair, Kristen Stewart style, but the shy routine feels like a put-on). What he doesn’t know is that it’s imbued with a corny, centuries-old curse - one that Millie’s friends easily explain via a simple Google search. Just before the opening scene ends, the Butcher steals an ancient Mayan sacrifice dagger, intending to use it to continue his killing spree the following night. Turns out, Vaughn’s better at playing a teenage girl than he is at harnessing his inner Norman Bates. Some may even laugh at the sight of, say, a kid’s head impaled from either side by a broken tennis racket, but the real punchline is the reveal of “Swingers” star Vaughn as the Blissfield Butcher.Īt 6’5″, the hulking actor certainly has the build to play a small-town serial killer, and the moment he lowers his mask is nothing if not a nod to Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot “Psycho” remake (of all things). In a decidedly R-rated prologue that sets the tone for just how grisly the subsequent murders will be, four high school students die in cringe-worthy ways that are so creatively absurd they’re unlikely to give anyone nightmares.
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