Halloween was a fortnight ago and we’re still getting new horror movies to watch. Let’s thank Friday the 13th for choosing to rock up one month late this year and our reward is this Freaky little treat. I should apologise for releasing this review on Sunday the 15th, but I was busy with other things, lost track of time and also I feel like being different today.

Freaky is a film with a very stupid title but ironically it’s the best horror movie I have seen this year. While movies like The Vast of Night and Invisible Man are probably better made films, but at the moment my tastes are favoring the absurdity over the straight and serious. Also another factor would be just two days ago I watched the fourth Friday the 13th movie, which was also stupidly absurd and entertaining. So overall I had a really fun time with Freaky but wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The premise of Freaky it mixes your basic switching mind/body plot with your typical slasher. The invincible psychotic horror villain jumps into the body of a young high schooler who will now act like The Terminator. While the shy virgin girl you expect to make it to the end credits is now Vince Vaughn and has to explain to her friends why she is all of a sudden a 40 something homeless man. Most of the comedy is the mocking of slasher old and tired tropes like the opening sequence is an embodiment of that with the teens being cluelessly picked off by a Jason Voorhees’ lookalike. The other is watching the stereotypical characters of these type of movies get thrown into wacky and hilarious situations. There are some more suspenseful parts here and there, but this film is an adult comedy mainly due to all the F-Bombs it drops.

This feels like a Hugh Grant from The Gentlemen situation when I say Vince Vaughn pretending to be a teenage girl carries the entire movie. More likely because the movie’s best jokes and scenes all revolve around Vince Vaughn, which is a good thing he was bringing his A-Game into this, because this is the best he’s ever been. Let’s hope this is just as successful comeback performance as it was for Eddie Murphy last year with Dolemite is my Name. He’s also pretty intimidating when needed to play the killer, so nothing against the other actors, who did well in their respective roles, but without Vince Vaughn this movie might be just above average rather than exceptionally great.

Now it feels appropriate to mention Freaky’s flaws. Firstly, this is a slasher and it’s hard to root for anyone because everyone drops 100 IQ points when a murderer is lurking about. I can only think of maybe two slasher movies where I actually cared about the characters. This is not one so when the movie tried to get me invested in the plot and characters it failed miserably because all I ever wanted was to have a fun time! I also didn’t like the film’s Macguffin device, this magic knife that the killer uses to stab our main character, in order to switch bodies, so it could do more murders. Why of all people would a fully grown man want to change into a weak skinny teenage girl? If I was an insane killer who wanted to kill everyone on sight, I would stab my magic knife into someone who is much bigger than me, like The Rock for example. Whatever, an innocent high school girl is a less suspicious option I guess. Also making yourself much cooler than the original girl ever was will help quickly cross off the teenage boys on the to kill list. That’s my next issue because she’s so tiny this gives the possible victims more of an opportunity to push the killer back or even escape! Luckily for her this is a horror movie so the ball will always end up in her court in the end.

At long last the end of this review. Freaky is an easy recommendation from me not just for the horror or slasher fan, but if you seek a distraction and want to have a good time. I saw this in the cinema, but if you want to wait a few weeks I hear it will appear on VOD by the end of the month. I have nothing else to say so after this sentence this will be the end.