Starring Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Katie Finneran, Alan Ruck

Directed by Christopher Landon

Blumhouse, out now

 

A teenage girl inadvertently swaps bodies with a serial killer

It’s a great idea on paper. Let’s mash up Friday the 13th with Freaky Friday to make a body swap comedy slasher horror. Apparently, it was originally called Freaky Friday the 13th and it wears the reference loudly on its sleeve (or rather its graphics) – but is now just called Freaky. This feels like an awkward uncertain hiccup – requiring too much explanation – but ‘bullied-high-school-teenage-girl-swaps-bodies-with-serial-killer’, that’s a sure-fire popcorn hit, surely?

I once co-wrote a kids’ body swap comedy for CITV in the UK called Big Meg, Little Meg and spent a good while researching the genre, so I was tickled enough by the concept of Freaky to take a look, surprised that no-one had ticked off this particular iteration before. As the 103 minutes ground ever onward, I became increasingly frustrated and disappointed. This ought to be both very funny and very scary, but it manages to be neither.

Maybe it’s one of those mash-ups that really is just ‘good on paper’, and for some fundamental reason is never going to work, but I think this is more of a wasted opportunity than that. Bottom line, the script isn’t good. It thinks it’s a lot cleverer than it is, but ends up stifling itself as it fails to master either genre, and fails even more to meld them in any kind of satisfying way.

Yes, there are five or six good laughs, but there are two dozen more gags that completely miss their mark. Yes, there are one or two vaguely scary moments, but there are another four or five plodding horror set pieces that are neither set up with any skill, and nor do they go anywhere. Yes, there are two plum lead parts, but neither Kathryn Newton nor Vince Vaughn manage to make anything of their transformations. Vaughn really ought to know better than playing a young woman in the style of a camp gay stereotype from the 1970s. This last shortcoming leads to a key scene, which could, with the right script and the right performance, have been both radical and touching. Instead, it’s… well… wince-inducingly awful.

I won’t spoil it for you. Go and see the movie and it can spoil itself without any help from me.

4/10

Martin Jameson