Mr. Movie: ‘Freaky’ adds horrific twist to the body-swap genre

TRIFI’s Friday the 13th Frights

The always fun group at the Tri-Cities International Film Festival (TRIFI) are going to have some fun tonight with an event called Friday the 13th Frights. Like this year’s film festival, the event will be virtual. There will be 13 international horror short films shown over a very fun three-hours.

The subjects include the usual horror fare. You’ll see seances, masked killers, slashers and psychopaths. There are mystery people living off limits in a home, boogeymen in closets and hauntings.

Then there is the always popular topic of the ultimate bad date.

Admission to the Friday the 13th Frights is free. Go to www.trifi.org for tickets and more information.

Freaky

COVID is keeping studios from releasing bigger films — those they’ve spent millions making — so we’re stuck with middle-of-the road films like “Freaky.” On most Friday the 13ths Hollywood will release some kind of a horror film to appease those connecting the date with the genre.

“Freaky” is Hollywood’s most recent Friday the 13th treat.

In a twisted, copycat way, “Freaky” is an homage to “Freaky Friday,” the popular kid flick of yesteryear. It’s done chop and slash horror movie style.

The premise is ripped off but the screenplay is different. In both the 1976 and 2003 versions of the teen-oriented flick, mother and daughter fall victim to a curse that causes them to change personalities but not bodies. In other words, mom’s personality resides in the daughter’s and vice-versa.

“Freaky” turns the switch from mom and daughter to a teenaged girl finding herself in the body a psychopath and one wearing a mask like Jason Voorhees. Or is it Michael Myers? While I am not sure about which franchise belongs to the two of them, I do know it’s not Freddie Krueger.

I guess I could look it up. I have seen their movies but didn’t care for, nor did I follow, the Friday the 13th flicks, the Halloween films or any of the movies in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

Looked it up. It’s Jason.

While he’s not playing Jason reincarnated, Vince Vaughn does the Jason role. His masked character is the Blissfield Butcher. Around Blissfield the Butcher is a legend and shows up for the first time in a long time on Wednesday the 11th. He murders four high school kids. On Thursday the 12th he attacks and stabs 17-year old Millie in the shoulder.

The same knife he uses to stab her also stabs him in the exact same position on his body.

She lives to tell the tale and gives a very good description of the Blissfield Butcher to police. The cops — in turn — plaster the town with posters of his image and give it to the local TV news. The night of the attack Millie has very vivid dreams of the man and how he is somehow connected to one of those South American tribes of antiquity.

The next morning Millie wakes up in the Butcher’s abode and in his body. He wakes up in her bedroom and her body. She — as he — has to figure out what’s going on and how to get herself back. Her problem is the police plastering. The Blissfield Butcher is a big guy and it’s hard for her to not be noticed.

On the other hand, the Butcher finds being a high school girl a positive. High school classes are full of fresh young people to kill.

“Freaky” is billed as a horror comedy thriller. For a comedy it’s kinda light on the humor. Chop and slash is usually tagged as horror. In my book whacking and hacking people to bits in creative ways doesn’t earn the horror tag. The only thing horrifying about chop-and-slash is that it manages to get made.

The movie also is totally lacking in the tension and thrills needed to be a thriller of any kind.

Vaughn obviously has a good time playing a 17-year old girl. In spots it’s fun to watch the 6’5” and 220 pound Vaughn dance around and behave like a teenager 30+ years his junior. He prances, pouts and panics while wiggling and sometimes wobbling through his scenes.

He’s also given a few good lines that will extract giggles from some of you and outright laughs for others. “Freaky” just doesn’t have enough of them.

Vaughn’s model for the role are Barbara Harris who did the adult-to-kid thing in the 1976 version of Freaky Friday and Jamie Lee Curtis who landed the job in the 2003 redo. Of the three, Harris managed to make me believe she really was a teenage girl in her mom’s body.

Curtis did it fairly well and so does Vaughn. Neither is in her league. Part of Vaughn’s problem is a script that just doesn’t give him enough to do. The focus is catching the chop-and-slasher. That doesn’t leave enough room for girl stuff.

If Vaughn struggles with the whole girl thing, his co-star and co-body person, Kathryn Newton gets it even worse. Co-writer and director Christopher Landon gives her very little to do other than glare at other actors. She plows through her scenes like she’s auditioning as a terminator in the next Terminator movie.

That’s too bad because Newton (TV’s “Little Women” mini-series, “Ben is Back”) is a decent young actress who deserves to have as much fun as her co-star. To get that means you need a better script.

Landon is a creative director and writer with — like his movie — lots of potential. He directed “Happy Death Day” and wrote and directed the sequel. Both movies totally cracked me up. They were genuinely original and quite funny.

“Freaky” has lots of potential but it just never delivers. The movie has laughs in spots and early on manages to generate a few of them. Some are expected, some are not, and even a few of them are freaky. What Landon isn’t able to do is give us is the kind of consistent humor found in the two Happy Death Day flicks.

His movie lacks the intelligence of the death day films. That’s disappointing because considering Vaughn’s exceptional talent, and that of the young cast he’s working with here, “Freaky” should be a lot more fun.

▪ Rated R for language, mature themes, blood and gore and violence. It’s playing at the Fairchild Cinemas Queensgate 12 and Southgate 10, the AMC Classic Kennewick 12 and at Cinemark Grand Cinemas in Walla Walla.

▪ Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5

Come Away

The premise — as developed by director Brenda Chapman — is set in England in the late 1800s and has a couple of kids trying to deal with some very adult issues. The children are Peter and Alice. The two kids — in Chapman’s mind and that of writer Marissa Kate Goodhill — became the inspiration for Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. Peter blames himself for his older brother, David’s death. David was the favorite child of his parents and one with the brightest of bright futures.

Peter wants to grow up quick and become David. He can’t fill his brother’s shoes but tries. His age keeps dragging Peter back to kid things as it does the age of his sister Alice. Influenced by a humorless aunt, Alice also wants to be older and more mature.

The death of David totally knocks parents Rose and Jack into a dangerous tailspin. Rose takes to drink and Jack slides back into London’s underbelly where he lived before meeting Rose. He owes people money and the couple end up deeply in debt.

Their children try to solve that problem with disastrous results. Not as disastrous as this movie but close.

Angelina Jolie and David Oyelowo star as Rose and Jack. Jolie attempts a British accent and fails horribly. Worse, she plays Rose with all the energy of a piece of wood. Jolie smiles at the child actors but there is little warmth in her character or her acting.

A big part of Jolie’s problem is the awful script that Chapman and Goodhill credit J.M. Barrie and Lewis Carol with writing. If the two authors were still alive they’d probably sue.

Oyelowo already has a British accent so he doesn’t get points deducted there. However, like Jolie and the kids, he doesn’t get much help from the writing.

“Come Away” does — somehow — manage to have two positives. The first is the acting of child stars Kiera Chansa who plays Alice and Jordan A. Nash who gets the nod as Peter. They’re both very, very good.

The second positive is how at times Chapman lets you view the story from the eyes of a child. As her 2013 Oscar for the Disney animated classic, “Brave” showed, the lady has very good storytelling skills. Sometimes she shows the kids in the natural fantasy world of a child and at other times they are forced into the unnatural world of what it’s like to be an adult.

It’s a brilliant contrast but just about all that’s appealing in the movie.

As for this being a movie for kids, don’t buy the marketing that claims this is a new classic. The material is way too adult to be of much interest to kids of any age. This is an adult movie. Period.

What’s saddest about “Come Away” is that it is also not a very good movie for adults.

▪ Rated PG for mature themes. It’s playing at the Fairchild Cinemas Queensgate 12 and Southgate 10, the AMC Classic Kennewick 12 and at Cinemark Grand Cinemas in Walla Walla.

▪ Rating: 1 out of 5

This story was originally published November 12, 2020 at 4:37 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie: ‘Freaky’ adds horrific twist to the body-swap genre."