Freaky Is Freakishly Fearfully Farcical

Freaky(Video On Demand)

Starring   Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Katie Finneran, Celeste O’Connor, and Alan Ruck.

Directed  by  Christopher Landon

Rating: *

No amount of  shiver-coating can  hide  the  fact that this purported terror fest is  as sick in mind as it is in body.After watching several teenagers  being savagely slain,it seemed  all in  vain. Who can takes this maelstrom  of mayhem  seriously, unless you are a sucker for masochism?  Apparently there’s a whole universe  of self-punishers  out there who  love the  senseless bloodbath and  find  a man being sawed  into  two halves(from head  to bum)  entertaining.

Some  of  the international reviews for this gore fest  found the  humour  amidst the horror most  gratifying. To that I say,  I pity your lives. If pleasure is  to be derived from the exploits of  a serial killer nicknamed Butcher (thus named  for  obvious reasons)then we are indeed a civilization  thriving on depravity.

 I  found Freaky neither funny nor fearful. Just plain stupid.  After a point the  ostensibly innovative  killings  ran out  of steam.And what we were left with is an oldfashioned  body-swap one-note  comedy where  the Butcher(Vince Vaugn) exchanges his body with the teen heroine Millie Kessler(Kathryn Newton). Thereafter the  joke is  that the Butcher looks like the killer  but behaves  like  the teen  heroine as Millie’s friends try to look as if they care.Ha ha

Very soon the  plot runs out  of excuses  to  extend  the  playing time  . The same  confrontational situation  is  created  between Millie(in the Butcher’s Body)  and  the Butcher(in Millie’s  body).

What   does  resonate beyond the  basic  pedestrian ism  of  the  material on-hand, is  the  need to shut down a plot before it  finally collapses  under the weight of its  nothingness.  Vince  Vaughan  has  been  praised  for his performance. But shrieking  yelling oohing  and aahing  like  a girl  is  not the  crest  of  histrionics. We’ve seen actors  of  the stature of  Dustin Hoffman  in Tootsie  and Robin Williams  in  Mrs Doubtfire behave  like women dispossessed..

 There  is  no drag act in Freaky. But what a drag!