Freaky (2020)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

Christopher Landon nails another feature, this one a deliciously wicked follow-up to Happy Death Day. Instead of being trapped in the "Groundhog Day" of her untimely and brutal murder, this time Landon's heroine finds herself trapped in the body of her murderer. Built and billed as a sort of Freaky Friday homage, Freaky skillfully sidesteps its inherent pitfalls and ends up sticking the landing almost every beat of its 100-minute runtime. And it has a fabulous soundtrack.

Bullied high schooler Millie (Kathryn Newton) performs as the ridiculous Blissfield Valley mascot during their homecoming football game. As she anxiously waits for her ride home afterward, she is attacked by the Blissfield Butcher -- a sort of suburban legend of a serial killer -- who killed four teens the night before. He stabs her with a knife from his previous crime scene, but before he can finish the job, he is chased off by Millie's older sister, a police officer. But the ancient dagger has magic properties, and by morning Millie realizes she is stuck in the Butcher's body. So, naturally, she goes to school.

Perhaps the funniest sequence in the film takes place within the school, as Millie (trapped in Vince Vaughn's body) wanders the halls looking for her best friends Nyla and Josh. Of course, their fight-and-flight response is riotously funny -- "You're black! I'm gay! We are so dead!" -- but Millie convinces them of the switcheroo just in time for them to confront the Butcher. Unfortunately, by this time, the killer has already killed two other people (both of whom are, interestingly, Millie's enemies) and has learned that in his innocent new body he is utterly free from suspicion in his crimes. He shrieks for help and then calmly turns toward new victims as the heroes flee the school guards.

With the Butcher becoming a mounting threat -- and the bodies piling up, casting more suspicion on Millie -- the three heroes have to research the dagger and how to reverse its effects while planning ways to stop the killer. And they have until midnight to complete the ritual. The clock is ticking, and the film never lags a single beat. But, as Landon masterfully does, the scares never overcome the heart of the story, and Millie learns valuable lessons about inner strength, dealing with her anxiety and awkwardness, and taking pride in being different and an outsider. It sounds trite when spelled out like this, but it's remarkably effective in this rollicking, violent comedy that rarely stops to ask for logic or explanations. It helps, too, that the two leading actors are doing some eye-popping, ballsy work (Vaughn hasn't shown this delicious side of himself before, except in Psycho and Brawl in Cell Block 99, and Newton makes a case for herself as a young and badass new action movie star) and are supported by enthusiastic secondary players, including Misha Osherovich, one of the few non-binary actors in such a prominent role in a mainstream movie.