The Most Purely Enjoyable Horror Movie Made in Years – The Atlantic

Read: 25 of the best horror films you can watch, ranked by scariness

The director understands that the best-known slasher villains, such as Halloweens Michael Myers or Friday the 13ths Jason Voorhees, derived their terror in part from how physically intimidating and unstoppable they seemed. So many famous horror-movie kills involve murderous men picking up their victims like toys and tossing them around, shrugging off stab wounds and gunfire with zombielike indifference. Vaughn himself is 6 foot 5, and Freaky emphasizes his size by surrounding him with diminutive teens (Newton is a good foot shorter than him). So when the roles reverse, and Vaughn is suddenly running screaming from a teenager holding a kitchen knife, the visual gag is electrified with genre-bending self-awareness.

One might be forgiven for forgetting that Vaughn spent more than a decade as one of Hollywoods biggest comedy stars. After years racking up hits such as Old School, Dodgeball, and Wedding Crashers, hes been taking grimmer roles of late, including in the controversial cop drama Dragged Across Concrete and the bleak second season of True Detective. But Vaughns comic chops remain undiminished, and he leans into the whimsy of playing a teenager, bouncing from scene to scene with the nervous energy of a horror-movie extra. Just as the actor uses his large frame to communicate menace early on, he turns his physicality into a hilarious hindrance after the body swap, playing someone who doesnt quite know how to control the lumbering form shes now possessing.

But the real star of Freaky is Newton, who has been doing consistent, winning work in television (on Halt and Catch Fire and Big Little Lies) and film (shes had memorable supporting roles in Blockers, Ben Is Back, and Detective Pikachu). Newton is perfectly charming as Millie, but once shes playing the Butcher, shes terrifically calculating and precise, a mini-Terminator who suddenly behaves with the kind of assured coolness that the real Millie (now played by Vaughn) finds almost breathtaking. This is the sly undertone to Freakyas with many a body-swap comedy, both characters unlock hidden potential in their new personages. Vaughn-as-Millie confesses to enjoying the Butchers bullying size and strength, but although shes still scared of what the Butcher (played by Newton) is doing in her own body, shes also beguiled by how confident he seems while doing it.

Landon is a genre filmmaker who is growing only more confident with every script (he co-wrote Freaky with Michael Kennedy). He emerged from the Paranormal Activity franchise, for which he wrote several entries and directed a spin-off, but first caught my attention with 2017s Happy Death Day, another clever parody that mashed up the slasher movie with a supernatural subgenre (the time-loop movie, e.g., Groundhog Day). That film, and its hilariously convoluted sequel, also took a familiar, marginalized horror figure (the peppy female victim) and turned her into the hero, giving her actual characterization rather than treating her as another corpse in a growing body count.

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The Most Purely Enjoyable Horror Movie Made in Years - The Atlantic

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero