Starring Vince Vaughn as a teenage girl, Freaky is not your average horror comedy. Directed by Christopher Landon (Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Happy Death Day), this body-swap funfest follows ordinary high school student Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton), who finds herself in an extraordinary situation when she becomes the target of the town's infamous serial killer, the Blissfield Butcher (Vaughn). Stabbed by The Butcher's mystical dagger, Millie wakes up transformed: she is the Blissfield Butcher, and he is her. Worse still, she has only 24 hours to get her identity back before she's changed forever.
The movie begins with a group of friends mocking the "geriatric serial killer" before they are all brutally slain in their mansion. With one-liners such as "Don't underestimate a straight white man's propensity for violence, Isaac," Freaky marks itself as this generation's Scream: a razor-sharp teen slasher for a progressive Gen Z audience. Indeed, attempts at feminism are made early on, with the same girl telling her boyfriend, "It's a vagina, not an all-night drive-thru," before she is staked through the heart by the bad white man.
Then viewers meet Millie's friends, who are also Gen Z stereotypes. Her friend Josh (Misha Osherovich) is a sassy gay guy with lines like "I love your black wiener, Mr Daniels," and "You're a f***ing piece, girl." Her other friend Nyla (Celeste O'Connor) is a socially conscious black girl who chastises Josh for his inappropriate language. Millie herself is rather ordinary, but even she is responsible for the quote: "I’ve never been so stressed and excited at the same time in my life. #Stresscited #NervesOfSteel #WhatIsSheDoing.”
Fortunately, Freaky plays with these stereotypes with humor, using them to satirize the horror genre itself. The movie makes this intention clear when Josh, being chased by the Blissfield Butcher, yells, "You're black, I'm gay, we are SO dead!" It's this self-awareness that saves Freaky from being just another cheap teen horror. Its jabs at its Gen Z demographic never feel elitist or exclusionary either; the audience is always made to feel in on the joke, which is refreshing for a movie of its sort.
After Millie and The Butcher swap bodies, the movie amps up its gender commentary. Whilst Millie gets used to feeling strong and having balls (which totally sucks), The Butcher confronts Millie's "f***ing useless" body and the toxic masculinity he faces as a teenage girl. First comes the verbally abusive woodshop teacher who's had it out for Millie since the beginning, and then comes the tons and tons of boys who sexually harass Millie since she's conventionally "hot." The Butcher as Millie takes care of them both, using extreme violence, and it's interesting to note how much harder it is to do so in this body. It's also telling that The Butcher's targets change when he becomes Millie, going from any gender in the beginning to mainly killing males after his transformation. In Millie's body, The Butcher gets a taste of what it's like to be a woman — a young, petite woman at that — and he hates it. Ironically, though, that does not stop him from being violent toward any other woman that crosses his path.
Meanwhile, Millie feels the (lighter) weight of being a man. She is finally strong enough to fight off her bullies, and, in true Gen Z fashion, none of her friends care about her change of identity. Even her love interest Booker (Uriah Shelton) makes it clear that he's not interested in her for her body, as he happily kisses Millie as The Butcher. Still, with all the advantages of being a man, Millie misses her own body and is dead set on reclaiming it. As the ending of Freaky proves, there are advantages to being a woman, too: namely, no balls.
Female power is on full display here, with Millie, her sister, and her mother banding together to take down The Butcher once and for all. It's significant that his demise comes at the hands of three women, as opposed to, say, Booker, who could have easily been the hero of the story. Freaky lets its women finish the job, proving that they are more than capable of it.
Pairing pure campy fun with progressive commentary lends Freaky its success, but it would be nothing without its brilliant cast. Newton is endearing as Millie and frightening as Butcher Millie — who easily has the best, most satisfying kills in the movie — and Osherovich and O'Connor are great as her funny, politically-awakened best friends. But the true star is Vince Vaughn, who plays a teenage girl with equal parts humor and empathy. Instead of merely poking fun at Millie, and other adolescent girls by extension, Vaughn lets his amusingly accurate portrayal provide the laughs and add depth to Millie's character. Vaughn as Millie as The Butcher (it's all very confusing) is kind, funny, and genuinely loveable. She is not like other girls — but only because she looks like a middle-aged man.