For decades, the story goes, the Blissfield Butcher has killed high schoolers before the homecoming dance. In the small town of Blissfield, two days before Friday the 13th, an urban legend recirculates about the Blissfield Butcher. If the 2002 Rob Schneider comedy The Hot Chick were melded with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer monster-of-the-week episode “The Pack,” in which Xander and a group of bullies begin to act like predatory hyenas, the result would be something like Freaky. But Freaky boasts such energetic performances from the thoroughly game Kathryn Newton and Vince Vaughn that the horror-comedy breezes by in a pleasant, amusing way, no matter how reductive its central conceit gets. The body-horror subgenre needs more nuance than Freaky provides: The recurring joke in this film truly boils down to, “Isn’t it weird to have breasts? Or to have balls?” That gets old quick. The horror genre generally welcomes questions that probe at the limits of physical bodies, from the grotesque transformations of the Cronenbergs to the fantastical folklore of Clive Barker to the demonic possession of Jennifer’s Body. There’s a nuanced way to explore what our outward appearance signifies about us and how our bodies serve as traps, but Freaky, the new theatrical release from Happy Death Day director Christopher Landon, isn’t it.
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