The opening scenes of Freaky lean on the nostalgia of classic slasher movie tropes: a group of horny teenagers tell the legend of a long-ago murder rampage over a campfire and then the masked killer emerges, dispatching them all violently and leaving their corpses displayed like works of bloody art. The twist comes after the Blissfield Butcher (played by Vince Vaughn) steals a ceremonial dagger to use on his next victim, outcast high school girl Millie (Kathryn Newton), who survives and wakes up the next morning (on Friday the 13th, in fact) in the body of a grown man.
Director Christopher Landon made his reputation for playful twists on the horror genre with the Groundhog Day-inspired Happy Death Day and its sequel. This is Freaky Friday meets Friday the 13th and Landon has even more fun with the body-swapping humor than he does with the conventions of the stalk-and-slash conventions. Newton transforms from a nerdy teenage girl to a conniving killer learning the limitations of a petite body while leveraging this new camouflage to target victims in high school.
Meanwhile, Vaughn transforms his body language to play a shrinking teenage girl testing out her massive new body and trying to convince her best friends who she really is under the skin of a serial killer. His gift for physical comedy and his commitment to remaining true to Millie's personality sells the role. Nyla Chones and Josh Detmer play her best friends, who team up to try to stop the murders and reverse the transformation, and Landon invests their friendship with more personality and character than you usually find in such horror films.
The plotting also makes it something of a dark wish-fulfillment revenge fantasy. Millie is bullied by the jocks, the popular girls, and even her shop teacher (Alan Ruck), and while the Blissfield Butcher doesn't feel Millie's anxieties or desires, the same tormentors make themselves immediate targets to the new killer. Twist aside, there's nothing here that is new or surprising—the killings are not only played as gruesome spectacles with a twist of ingenuity, they unfold with a sense of inevitability—but the sense of humor, the energy, and the momentum help make this take on the classic slasher movie a lot of fun.
The DVD and Blu-ray releases feature filmmaker commentary, four short featurettes, and three deleted scenes. The Blu-ray release also includes a bonus DVD and a UV digital code. Recommended.