"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Freaky

FREAKY is the recent Blumhouse horror comedy conceived under the title “FREAKY FRIDAY THE 13TH,” because yes, it is a slasher movie combined with a body switch comedy. A psychotic serial killer called “the Blissfield Butcher” (Vince Vaughn, THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK, PSYCHO) steals an ancient magic dagger, not realizing that when he uses it to stab random teen victim Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton, THE MARTIAL ARTS KID) their souls will switch places. Whoops.

The director is Christopher Landon (BURNING PALMS), which makes a whole lot of sense, because he’s the guy who did HAPPY DEATH DAY, a slasher movie combined with GROUNDHOG DAY (and a movie I enjoyed quite a bit). I heard an interview where Landon said he was a little reluctant to be that guy, but he liked the idea by co-writer Michael Kennedy (assistant animation producer, Family Guy) so much he had to go for it anyway.

Like HAPPY DEATH DAY, Landon’s new one benefits from a strong lead performance – in fact, two. No, come to think of it, four lead performances between two actors. But as we first meet Millie in the teenage girl body portrayed by Newton, it has the feel of a solid SCREAM-era teen slasher movie. She has two very supportive best friends named Nyla (Celeste O’Connor, WETLANDS) and Josh (Misha Osherovich, NOS4A2, THE GOLDFINCH), and one thing that’s different than it would’ve been even in the SCREAM days is that Josh is explicitly gay and they’re able to have jokes and plot developments related to it without treating it as anything unusual.

Like Tree in HAPPY DEATH DAY or Sidney in SCREAM or other characters I’m not thinking of, Millie is trying to put her life together after the loss of a parent – her dad died of cancer a year ago. Now her mom Coral (Katie Finneran, Judy in the 1990 NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD remake) drinks too much and her police officer older sister Charlene (Dana Drori, High Fidelity) is angry and she’s trying to be the peacemaker.

Millie is supposed to be a kid who has been bullied all her life and has trouble fitting in, and we see jock dudes randomly calling her ugly and stuff. As in many teen movies, this really doesn’t track, since she and her friends seem equally or more attractive, cool and confident as the popular kids. I understand that kids/people can be cruel to anyone for any reason, and there’s a class component here (she’s attacked for buying clothes on sale), but I feel like it’s unfair to real life awkward nerds to replace them in movies with cute kids who look straight out of a catalog.

One part that really does work: the lead mean girl is named Ryler (Melissa Collazo, two episodes of Swamp Thing). I don’t think I’ve ever heard that name before, and also I don’t think a better name exists for a character like that.

As is also common in teen movies, the biggest assholes are the guys in letterman jackets, but also there’s one nice one that Millie has a huge crush on. His name is Booker (Uriah Shelton, ENTER THE WARRIORS GATE, season 3 finale of Justified) and we know from his jacket that his last name is Strode, which is too obvious of a reference to make it past the first draft in my opinion but I guess at least it’s not Carpenter or Craven.

A sign that this is a pretty well-made movie is that I was involved enough in the establishing teen movie part that I wasn’t impatient to get to the body switch. Once it happens, it moves pretty fast, barreling through the simple needs of the plot (convince her friends she’s Millie even though she’s inside the body of an adult man, find out what to do to switch back, go do that) while finding various ways to play with a teenage girl in an adult male body and a murdering psycho in a teenage girl body.

While running around trying to hide from cops and locals who saw police sketches, Millie learns how to pee standing up, gets to terrorize a few of her tormenters, etc.; meanwhile the Butcher makes Millie’s body more popular by wearing a leather jacket and putting up with no shit while living among the teenagers he gets off on murdering. I generally don’t like in slasher movies when they have a bunch of piece-of-shit characters so you’ll root for Michael Myers or whoever to kill them, but I think it works here because of that gimmick that an asshole shop teacher (Alan Ruck, SPEED) or some football team gang rapists don’t know what they’re getting into when they try that shit on who they think is their favorite victim Millie.

One major piece of the movie that requires suspension of disbelief is the idea that Millie-in-the-Butcher’s-body would be able to convince her friends that she’s Millie. They’re scared and trying to bash “him” with blunt objects but she swears she’s Millie and rattles off her favorite TV shows and stuff – they quickly believe her and then for the rest of the movie they’re unquestioningly onboard with believing in magic. I suppose it’s a statement on their closeness as friends vs. tensions in her family that she doesn’t do the same for her mom or sister, and instead tries to hide from them.

Vaughn has received well-deserved praise for his performance as Millie-in-the-Butcher’s-body. It’s comedic, obviously, and there’s a bit of that “adult man talking in a girly voice” type of shtick, but overall he seems very invested in taking it seriously, not being too broad. That’s hard to do when so much of it has him running around, moving his body like a scared teenage girl who hates sports.

Newton is also great as the Butcher, lowering her head, narrowing her eyes, moving intently, like a predator. You can see a different person behind those eyes, so it’s genuinely funny to see the Butcher wake up in Millie’s bedroom and wonder what in the hell this place is with a PITCH PERFECT 2 poster on the wall. (Later we learn that he prefers to sleep in an abandoned mill surrounded by dead animals and mangled mannequins.)

One question I had about the logic of the story (which is probly explained and I missed it): what is the Butcher trying to do? Does he want to stay in the teenage girl body? I guess so because he tries to stop her from reversing the curse.

I liked this movie, and there’s no reason to treat the films of Christopher Landon as Highlanders, but if there could be only one I would definitely choose HAPPY DEATH DAY. They both have likable characters and good casts and use their goofy premises in clever and funny ways, but they also both try to ground their stories in themes of grief and acceptance about the loss of a parent and the way this affects the surviving family members, and in that department I think HAPPY DEATH DAY and its goofier sci-fi sequel HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U are much more effective.

FREAKY’s attempt to re-use that formula feels painfully forced. They lay the groundwork with the mom and sister characters, but because of the body switch the only way they could figure to get it out is a ridiculous scene where Millie-in-adult-male body is in a dressing room at the clothing store where mom works, mom thinks she’s a customer, yet starts talking to her through the door about the death of her husband and how it’s affected her daughters? You can feel them repeatedly struggling to make it make sense – oh what am I saying, you’re just trying to buy a shirt, why am I saying this to you, it’s weird but I feel like we have some sort of a connection, unseen person I’m talking to through a door who is trying to get rid of me. I appreciate that they tried to get those emotions in there, but they really needed to figure out a better way to do it.

On a more superficial horror movie level, the killer’s baby mask in HAPPY DEATH DAY is much cooler than this movie’s crude clay hockey mask with the eye holes too close together. Luckily that’s only worn at the beginning. And I will say this in FREAKY’s favor: it has the R-rating and the type of fun, gory kills that I always thought HAPPY DEATH DAY deserved. There are a couple really good ones, for example (SPOILER FOR THE FIRST KILL) he slams a wine bottle in a guy’s mouth and it crushes inside him and explodes glass shards out of his throat. Bravo!

But anyway, if “FREAKY FRIDAY THE 13TH” sounds fun to you I think you will enjoy this.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2021 at 10:51 am and is filed under Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

38 Responses to “Freaky”

  1. I think the Butcher does say he wants to stay in her body because he can get away with more. No one suspects him as a teenage girl. But maybe I’m fancasting that.

  2. That was my conclusion too, and it likely was explained at some point, but if so I either missed or forgot it.

  3. “there’s no reason to treat the films of Christopher Landon as Highlanders”

    I think I sort of see what you were kind of almost trying to do there, as I had a similar reaction to his name.

  4. This is a really fun and entertaining movie. I knew I would like it (I’m pretty easy to please as far as genre stuff goes) but was very pleasantly surprised how much.

    Love both DEATH DAYS too. Chris Landon is really good at making fast paced, sort of wacky slashers with a lot of heart.

  5. I’ve only seen the first HAPPY DEATH DAY, and I’m kind of a Vaughn skeptic (though I liked him in TRUE DETECTIVE season 2). But this looks pretty good, and it’s on my “one of these days” list.

  6. I saw this movie when it got a cinema release in Australia.

    It was all right but it really could have done so much more with the concept.

    As the lead character of this film lost her father and the lead character of Happy Death Day lost her mother … well, suffice to say a number of people including the people who made this film have made mention of the possibility of a crossover between the main characters of each series and their universes.

  7. I liked the movie sort of…but man did I think Vaughn was atrocious. Absolutely godawful. He’s not playing a teenage girl, he’s playing a seven year old. Compare what the actress is doing before the switch, and then afterwards how Vaughn plays her. It’s just cringeworthy. I like Vaughn a lot of times but whenever he tries to stretch he’s just the worst. The actress did a great job playing a killer more believeably.

    I did like it though, how we got to spend some time with Vaughn as the killer in the end after he’s been the lead for most of the movie. At first I thought they were going to end it too quickly and glad they didn’t.

  8. https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1050391663552671744

    It turns out this guy on Twitter got to the heart of the matter very precisely a couple years ago. “Being conservative” is getting people into trouble only in the sense that conservatives are becoming more open and casual about bigotry being part of their world view. Things that used to mean you were David Duke (ban Muslims, build the wall, Mexicans are rapists) now just mean you’re a Republican, but we can’t let them launder that into acceptability. I believe it is our society’s responsibility to tell bigots to fuck off, and we have often not lived up to this responsibility. What the Disney corporation chooses to do with their employees who we are telling to fuck off is their business. And if they fire someone and it seems unfair we will also speak up. It already happened with James Gunn (which was specifically a case of right wingers trying to weaponize this against people for their political views).

  9. Other than Millie, I found everyone in this movie to be extremely unpleasant. Her family (mostly her awful sister) were hard to watch. Her school seems like it’s just a school for bullies. That mean teacher was over the top with his aggression. The mean girls treated Millie like she was hideous and wore rags even though she looked normal, well dressed, and pretty. Even the first batch of disposable teens were awful. Her two friends were over the top in their own roles. Made for a really hard watch until the switch happens and the movie gets funny.

  10. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Vince Vaughn turn in a bad performance, even when he’s in bad stuff.

  11. Yeah the writing was bad…I get they were trying to be funny but they pitched it at a level so cartoonish it was just stupid. You can have assholes you want to see die without them acting like they’re a Mighty Mouse cartoon bully or something.

    I think Vaughn was also awful in Psycho…this movie reminded me of that. Just mannered, ticky acting that you can tell he’s trying so hard to do and it’s all calculated but he doesn’t act like he FEELS it…Nic Cage is a guy who can do the ticky nutty stuff yet put some raw emotion into it and you can buy it. Not to say they should always be letting him do it in every project, but in proper context he can sell it and Vaughn looks cringe.

  12. LOL I always forget that the Psycho remake exists… One of these days I’ll have to actually watch it!

  13. It’s so bad, Anne Heche does her mannered acting too. The one scene that works is my favorite in the original too…the scene where the detective (here played by William H. Macy bringing some acutal professionalism to this shit) questions Norman. After that the movie is someone leagues worse than the original. And too bad, I thought they could have been on to something. Everyone does remakes but what if they had taken the script and shot it word for word, but staged it however they wanted? Like it’s not a remake, it’s just an adaptation like theatres do the same plays or there’s a ton of movie Hamlets? That could have been cool…although you’d need to give it to an actual good visual director and not Van Sant who basically shoots uninterestingly filmed dramas. But what if DePalma did it? Or some crazy art film director? What if Spike Lee did it?

  14. I think Anne Heche is the main reason I’ve never tried to see it. She always seemed like fluff to me. She was in one movie I like though, a weird early 90’s Christopher Walken movie called The Wild Side. It’s twisted.

  15. I saw that! Awful Tarantino wannabe mixed with the also popular (at the time) 90s erotic thriller. With an endless sex scene between Heche and Joan Chen. But the scene where Walken has to teach Steven Bauer a lesson was worth it.

  16. I still haven’t seen WILD SIDE, but director Donald Cammell (WHITE OF THE EYE) committed suicide while distraught over the studio re-editing it. So that seems like a strong argument for choosing the director’s cut that came out years later.

  17. Oh no! That makes me so sad. It’s such an over the top, fun movie. It would NEVER get made today.

  18. Holy crap, he directed Performance???
    Man, if you directed Performance and worked with Nic Roeg all the time, why let anything get to you?

  19. Oh Vern that’s interesting. I didn’t realize Cammel made that movie, dude was a real madman and knowing his past maybe that sent him over the edge but sounded like he was real close anyway. If anyone wants to read about the most bizarre suicide EVER, go read about what this guy did.

    Having said that I’d be shocked if the movie was still good…just the raw materials didn’t look there. BUT, I am intrigued and will check this out, this guy was an underrated director.

    Thomas it’s funny, but some friends and I were just having that discussion about stuff that wouldn’t get made today. For sure there are examples of things that wouldn’t, but at the same time I don’t necessarily buy that. Maybe a goofy programmer like Wild Side wouldn’t, but remember people grew up on South Park and It’s Always Sunny is still on (I haven’t seen it but I heard that’s pretty bad). Tarantino still makes movies that we’d claim couldn’t be made today if made 40 years ago, and they JUST made another INSANELY long for some reason remake of I Spit on Your Grave and they don’t skimp on the rape stuff. Made by the original director!

  20. I haven’t seen anything else Cammel did, but WHITE OF THE EYE is fucking great. On paper, it doesn’t sound like anything special, but something about it just sinks into your grey matter and stays there. It might have the scariest and most believable heel turn of all time. The moment of realization is deeply, deeply unsettling.

  21. WHITE OF THE EYE is streaming on Prime right now, and well worth a look if you haven’t seen it before. I loved PERFORMANCE and always wanted to see WILD SIDE, but never got around to finding a director’s cut… although now that I look for it, it looks like it’s actually on youtube! Interestingly, I believe there are actually three versions of the movie, the theatrical cut, an unrated cut, and a director’s cut (which was made long after Cammel’s death, and I’m not really sure what process they used to make it). My recollection is that the unrated version is the one which is supposed to have the epic-length sex scene, which is actually significantly truncated in the “director’s cut”

    Wild.Side.Director's.Cut.avi

    Wild Side wild side wild side

  22. I saw one of the earlier versions, and whichever I saw that sex scene went on FOREVER.

    White of the Eye is really good…like Mr. M says it doesn’t sound like anything but the shooting style of that movie was really interesting.

  23. From what I’ve read, his disagreements with Nu-Image were over his experimental editing style and over them trying to make him put more sex in it so they could sell it based on that. So it makes sense if there’s less of it in the director’s cut (which was put together by the editor he had worked with).

  24. Even the studio edit of WILD SIDE is all right, though the director’s cut is a significant improvement.

    Cammell fans should also have a look for THE TOUCHABLES, from the first screenplay he ever worked on, about some groupies who hold a rock star captive in a giant bubble dome while a gangster tries to track him down. It’s possibly more interesting than good — it’s a sexploitation film, at least by 1968 standards, heavy on psychedelic art direction — but it’s very interesting, especially as an embryonic version of PERFORMANCE. The soundtrack includes Syd-era Pink Floyd.

  25. in the late 90’s I worked at a video store. It was one of those amazing stores that had been around for a long time and had just thousands of movies, well organized. It was pretty much heaven. I could watch all the movies I wanted for free, any time, all the time.

    One of the things I liked to do was record movies onto compilation tapes, like I had an Anthony Hopkins tape, I had a Christopher Walken tape, I had an Abel Ferrara tape, a “Tarantino type but not tarantino” tape… I felt like a movie museum curator, trying to gather an eclectic library of the best stuff. If there was a movie I really liked and it couldn’t be recorded, it would break my heart.

    It wasn’t the big movies I wanted. You could get those anywhere. So my Hopkins tape would have TITUS and SURVIVING PICASSO. My Walken tape wouldn’t have True Romance or The Rundown or what have you, it would have THE WILD SIDE, THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS, and then maybe EXCESS BAGGAGE. I think I said “Fck it” and put THE IMMORTALS with Eric Roberts on it. that fit perfectly. I often struggled over which could be the third. (The Addiction, King of New York, the Funeral, and New Rose Hotel were already together on a tape).

    That was a different time. I found movies by walking through video rental places and seeing what jumped out at me. So, any time something that had “jumped out at me” in that way turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable, I always gave it a special place in my heart. And so is the case with Wild Side. For a while it is just nonsense, then Chris Walken shows up acting weird and eventually does some wild weird stuff and it just becomes highly entertaining. The scene that wouldn’t get made today with Steven Bauer and Anne Heche is probably problematic for most people, so I’ll reserve comment on it.

    (But Muh, you’re right, I should clarify and say rather that it wouldn’t get made as an obstensibly normal movie. I’m still baffled that they made a bunch of new I Spit on your Grave movies, and I think that the media was just too disinterested in that in general to make the expected fuss, but for a big rape scene to be in a non-horror genre movie today, then the whole movie would have to be about that, it wouldn’t just be a thing that happens and the movie is still about a bigger plot.)

    Anyway, the sleazy beginning with sax music in an office in downtown Long Beach is just mid 90’s bliss for me. I immediately know I’m home. It looks so cheap and easy that I’m amazed it wasn’t by a first time director.

  26. Muh,
    To me, It’s Always Sunny is the Wire to Arrested Development’s Sopranos.

  27. Some really tasty steadicam work by Larry McConkey in WHITE OF THE EYE. Always liked that one (and Performance for that matter, but for different reasons).

  28. Thomas, I’ve never actually seen It’s Always Sunny. Not a huge sitcom fan although lately I got into The New Girl and it’s ridiculously funny. But I like it because the characters are good natured and it’s fun, I’d have a harder time getting into Sunny where everyone’s an asshole. In a drama it’s not so bad as long as it’s a crime thing because usually everyone ends up dead. But I’ve been loving New Girl, and I loved Community but only watched three seasons, and loved Parks and Rec.

    But in regards to Wild Side’s problematic scene, it’s in exactly that kind of movie you WOULD still get that scene. A crazy maniac director writing out his weird obsession filled stories? Yep that’s the kind of guy who’s not going to shy away from stuff like that…maybe it wouldn’t get financed who knows, but someone paid for a…let me say again because I don’t believe it either…THREE HOUR DAMN LONG Spit on Your Grave. THREE HOURS, that’s crazier to me than the idea they did another remake of that. But rape scenes are at least getting looked at critically now…I didn’t have a problem with any of them in Game of Thrones where some people did. But it’s sure nice not to have to sit through four of them in Death Wish 3 just because they wanted some gratuitous boob shots and that’s an easy way to throw them in there. Very common in the sleazy 80s. At least Friday the 13th did it with shower scenes.

  29. Muh, if you love NEW GIRL, you should really check out COUGAR TOWN, which is currently on Disney+. As I said somewhere else here a few days ago, you might give it a few episodes until the whole “Divorced woman in her 40s starts dating younger men” plot is over (Which to my surprise happens much earlier than I remember it), but then it becomes one of the funniest hangout comedies of the last few decades. (But even during its early episodes, there is a lot of great stuff happening.)

    About IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY: I only saw the first 5 seasons, which were the only episodes that made it to Germany, but I have to admit, for an “edgy” show about a bunch of assholes, who make everybody’s life worse (but mostly their own), it’s surprisingly unshitty. It has its fair share of bad taste humor (Especially the season 1 finale is a clear case of “Fuck it, we get cancelled anyway, let’s go all out!”), but, at least in the seasons that I saw, never make you feel dirty for laughing about the characters’ shittiness or gives you the feeling that the writers just try to push buttons and are proud of their nihilism. (From what I’ve heard later seasons actually have some seriously great “very special episodes” about racism and coming outs, which are a far cry from how a show like SOUTH PARK would tackle these topics.)

    Plus I think it’s the only case of “The network forced the creators of the show to put a celebrity on the cast to boost ratings” that actually worked out great. It’s hard to imagine the show without Danny DeVito now.

  30. I always feel guilty about not being able to get into IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY. I tried watching it and found it to be SHOUTING: THE TV SHOW. Just assholes yelling at and over each other in the assumption that louder = funnier. I’m sure they built up layers of character development and mythology that add depth to the humor over the course of the 147 seasons this thing has been running, but I find the surface level of the material so deeply unpleasant that I can’t bring myself to explore further. I’m glad the show cemented Danny De Vito’s status as a national treasure, though.

  31. My sister LOOOOVVVED Cougartown. I should check that out one of these days. And it’s funny because they talk about that show all the time on the show she hadn’t seen, Community…and even did actual character crossovers.

    I was surprised DeVito went back to a sitcom and THEN stayed for so long but apparently he loves it so much. I’m not sure his character was supposed to stay in it but I read some thing where he said he was having way too much fun to leave.

  32. Yeah, that Abed appearance on COUGAR TOWN is seriously great. Especially if you, like me when I saw it, have no idea who that guy is, so it’s the most random of all random sight gags.

  33. Missed opportunity: Butcher!Millie should’ve entered every room by doing a Kane Hodder smash through the door. Release the doorsmash cut!

    I thought that was pretty surprisingly tolerable, good even, for a movie pitched at horror nerds, to the point that the Butcher really has no motivation or backstory other than cosplaying Jason Voorhees. It’s an inside joke everyone gets, but they at least committed to the bit of ‘what if Jason Voorhees got body-swapped” and didn’t go all needlessly meta about ‘the rules’ like The Final Girls or some shit. (Although they did joke along the lines of “the black and gay people always die first,” which I know is a cliche with black characters–to the point that joking about the cliche is a cliche in itself–but is it really a thing for gay ones? All that’s ringing a bell is the gay character in Bride of Chucky, and I recall him staying alive until pretty late in the game.)

    Anyway, a little more flopsweat than Happy Death Day–the family coming together to battle the Butcher didn’t feel particularly earned. I wouldn’t say it was a swing and miss; maybe a bunt, or another mediocre baseball metaphor. But it did find time to play its crazy premise straight and vertically bisect Alan Ruck, so that puts it over a lot of Nic Cage misfires. (Now, Nic Cage in Freaky 2–that could be Blumhouse’s Terminator to T2 moment.)

  34. Thomas Caniglia

    March 1st, 2021 at 1:19 pm

    Kaplan: LOLLL, I would have loved a doorsmash. Especially if they recreated one of the good ones, like Jason axing the mean girl in F13 part 7 (my favorite Jason moment).

    Muh: If you like good natured sitcoms, I also recommend Happy Endings and Newsradio.

    I LOVE Cougartown. All of the characters are so much fun. It reminds me a little of the humor of Santa Clarita Diet. I love how they openly make fun of the terrible title.

    My thing with sit-coms is, if they have a laugh track, I’m out. I can tolerate it if they are good ones from before the Arrested Development Revolution, but that’s it.

  35. Kaplan I can hardly think of too many gay characters in horror movies at ALL from the time period that Freaky is evoking. I’m sure there were some but it’s not like the black guy dies first for sure.

    Some of those 90s movies are funny, where to make up for all of those black guys dying first they cast a rapper in some random part and, knowing the black audience would be PISSED if they die, let them live until the end.

    Thomas I did see Newsradio! I was a kid when that came out so I wasn’t as familiar with Phil Hartman except seeing him in some SNL sketches but that show is excellent. I’m like you, I don’t usually care for the sitcoms with laugh tracks but that’s a great one. I saw some of Cheers and that was a really funny show, and Frasier and Taxi. I liked Frasier better than Cheers. I guess I ought to see Cougartown, my sister may have some of those, I’ll have to ask.

  36. Thomas Caniglia

    March 1st, 2021 at 6:48 pm

    CJ’s description of Cougartown as one of the best hangout comedies is spot on.

    I suppose Halloween Resurrection did right one timeless wrong by having Busta Rhymes not only survive a confrontation with the slasher, but survive the whole movie AND have a campy speech at the end.

  37. I saw this one last night and it was fun. It wasn’t as good as HAPPY DEATH DAY, but it was still fun. Newton does a good job as a psycho killer. Vaughn does an okay, maybe better than okay, job as a teenage girl. He’s not terrible, but he’s not Jack Black in JUMANJI good. He’s got the physical movement down. The talking and mannerisms were hit and miss. Sometimes he played it too young. But some of that might’ve been the script, too. Before the body switch Millie seemed like a quiet, unassuming girl and then after the switch she’s suddenly a babbler? I mean, it’s legit that a teen girl waking up in a middle age pscyho killer’s body might induce a stress reaction of babbling, but it would’ve been better for the movie to keep a more coherent personality. They both played the “waking up in another person’s body” scene really well.

    I’m torn with how they played the fact that as a teenage girl he couldn’t just use bull strength and kill people like he had been. It seemed like he didn’t really make any adjustments to his approach. Which was kind of cool. He was getting his ass kicked by the shop teacher and just kept after him like a wild animal. Like, did he even realize he didn’t have the same strength? I wish they had made it more clear that this is what was happening, though. I wish it had not left up to me to say, that’s what I’m going to say is happening. Since they addressed it with her by having her talk about it, I’m guessing that it’s not clear from his perspective was intentional. It may also have been cool for him to realize and adjust his methods. Although, that wouldn’t really fit with the crazy person who sleeps with dead animals and can’t seem to not kill people even if he just barely woke up in another person’s body.

    One thing I was impressed with was the scene with the boy she had a crush on and the two of them in the backseat. I liked how they played that scene sincerely and not for laughs or squeamishness. I don’t think they were 100% successful, because I didn’t wince a little at the kiss, but I applaud their efforts. Or maybe I’m reading it wrong and it was supposed to induce squirming.

  38. While this movie is all in all a good time, I REALLY hated every single one of the characters. Even the protagonist. Some, like the mother, were just too close to real life people that I knew, but others, like the best friends, were IMO has shitty as the bullies and deserved to die just like them. (Also hey, a gay best friend who behaves like an asshole and justifies it with being gay and another boomer caricature of a woke teen, who rather corrects her friend for misgendering a body switched psycho killer than listens to his plan. Horror really seems to love catering to asshole redditors and right wingers these days, even if in this case it might more come from “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if she would say something like that now?” cluelessness, instead of actual shittiness.)

    But I would love to see a prequel. Vince Vaughn was a surprisingly effective psychopath with good slasher movie killer posture.

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