Freaky (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
Follow Genre: Comedy, Horror, Thriller
Director: Christopher Landon
Distributor: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Duration: 102 minutes

Freaky (Blu-ray) – Movie Review

Site Score
6.0
Good: Fun spin on 'Freaky Friday', Special effects
Bad: Turns very bland after the great introduction
User Score
4.5
(2 votes)
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Rating: 4.5/10 (2 votes cast)

Back in 2017 we very much enjoyed Happy Death Day. This horror-comedy turned the Groundhog Day story into something more dark and grim, while still remaining accessible for comedy enthusiasts. When we saw the initial trailers of Freaky, which is also directed by Christopher Landon, we were quite intrigued. It seemed this movie would take Freaky Friday’s (or The Hot Chick’s) classic story and turn it into something more gruesome as well. While the movie started off extremely strong, we eventually felt a bit disappointed by the time the credits started rolling.

Freaky starts off like any good horror movie, with a bunch of teenagers getting slaughtered by a homicidal maniac. This then serves as the red thread, as it seems Blissfield’s ‘Butcher’ (Vince Vaughn) is still not done murdering teenagers. We then get to know Millie (Kathryn Newton), a very average young adult that just tries to survive the hard-knock life of her high school. When her mom forgets to pick her up, leaving her stranded alone in the desolate parking lot of the local football field, she encounters the Butcher, who then tries to murder her. The Butcher, however, fails in adding another kill to his repertoire, but he is able to stab Millie and thus injure her. In some freak accident, the two swap bodies during the night, as it seems that Blissfield’s serial killer used a magical dagger to harm Millie. Now the Butcher will have free reign in Millie’s body to stalk new prey, while Millie has to do her best not to get arrested while she runs around looking like the now-wanted serial killer.

While Freaky’s story is interesting, it gets ruined by the flow and pacing of the movie. The movie starts off very strong with an interesting introduction and this continues to be the case for the first quarter of the film. The film proves to be original and fun (and brutal) to then slow down and put all the action and story development on a simmer. This pace maintains until the end of the film, where we get treated to one more action segment, to then, once again, slow down to an excruciatingly slow pace where the end scene drags on longer than the ending of The Lord of the Rings. We honestly don’t know what happened here, as we believe there was more than enough material to make this an interesting piece of cinema. For some reason, all information is given during the first 20 minutes of the movie, to then turn into a snoozefest with the occasional gory scene thrown in-between, making sure the viewers don’t doze off completely.

The acting performances are actually quite good in this one. We think that both Kathryn Newton and Vince Vaughn adapt to their roles quite well, as close after the beginning, Vaughn is tasked to portray a teenage girl and Newton has to play a homicidal maniac. The movie succeeds in letting the viewer believe in the actual body swap and that already makes up for the poor pacing of the film. Supporting roles are also handled with the proper grace, worthy of a big-budget horror-comedy production. The movie uses a few stereotypes here and there, but it plays them out so well that it becomes a proper parody of said stereotypes.

The Blu-ray version of Freaky comes with a few fun extras, which mainly revolve around the creative process. We get to see some deleted scenes or can indulge ourselves with commentaries, but we also get to learn how certain practical effects were pulled off. Overall, there’s not that much additional content to be found here, but what’s present is quite enjoyable.

Conclusion

Freaky was still somewhat enjoyable, but the movie mainly dulled down the further it progressed. The story was fun, the concept was great, but the horrible pacing made the halfway mark turn into a drag, rather than the explosive and amusing experience this could have been. We would still love to see Christopher Landon tackle more projects such as this, as he clearly knows what he is doing. With some attention to the overall flow, we hope to see another classic story being turned into a horror-comedy in the future. For now, this one may be fun to watch once, to ultimately gather dust on one of your DVD or Blu-ray shelves.

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Rating: 4.5/10 (2 votes cast)
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Freaky (Blu-ray) - Movie Review, 4.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings
Ibuki


Aspiring ninja.

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