Freaky-- My take on the movie with spoilers!

PLOT SUMMARY: When Millie swaps bodies with a serial killer, she realizes she has only very little time left before the change becomes permanent. 

Won’t it be amazing if you could change places with another person for a day?

Yeah, being yourself is great and all but given the opportunity, tell me you won’t want to trade places with someone else for one day. Maybe it’s a president of a country or a celebrity or maybe someone you admire.

But this is all great when the change takes place voluntarily. You get to decide when and whom you want to trade places with.

It is when that choice is taken away and you are coerced into living someone else’s life that the problems begin.

Freaky is probably another chapter from the Freaky Friday franchise only this time a mother and daughter don’t have to learn to empathize with each other, rather a teenage girl must race against time to make the transition back before she is forever stuck in a serial killer’s body and of course that isn’t much fun.

The serial killer in question is a tall middle-aged man whose face has been recognized and who lives in hiding and is at best acquaintances with a homeless person.

FREAKY Movie Plot 

In the very first scene, four teenagers are murdered by a masked man just as the parents of the teenage girl return. They are hoping their daughter hasn’t invited any guys to the house in their absence. They are shocked to find their daughter hanging from the wall and that she had invited guys behind their backs who are murdered too.

A day before (Freaky) Friday, Millie awakens and blows a kiss at the posters adorning her wall. She has just lost her father and her mother is suffering acute depression which has caused Millie to do whatever her mother asks of her which includes ditching her friends to spend time with her. Charlene is her elder sister and a police officer who argues with their mother on a daily basis to let Millie have some fun.

Millie hides her college brochures while her mother and sister argue. At school, Millie meets up with her friends Nyla and Josh who leave for their classes and also so that Millie’s bully Ryler can come to torture her. Some remarks are made which bring Millie’s spirits down but they are lifted again when she sees her crush, Booker. He gives her an awkward smile and it is clear she knows Millie likes him.

Later in class, for some reason, Millie is late even though she was pretty much outside at the same time Booker was. The professor gives her a hard time and makes fun of her for being tardy with her project even though she wasn’t due to present. Millie’s day couldn’t get any worse, except of course it does.

The Blissfield Butcher didn’t have too much fun killing four teenagers and waits outside the school so that he can catch a teenager alone and kill them. Perhaps the killer went to the same school and for some reason wants to kill the students there only. Why does he pick Blissfield High students is still a mystery.

Millie is in her mascot costume and is dancing like a beaver and is of course mocked by the athletes. Booker is there and does nothing to stop his friends from mocking her because he wants to remain cool in his friends’ eyes. his way he gets to keep his friends while showing Millie that “oh look at me, I’m the only one who didn’t make fun of you so please continue to have a crush on me.”

Millie continues to have a crush on him.

Once the sports event is over, Millie finds her mother is late picking her up. She tells her family to go home as her mother will be here anytime now. Nyla and Josh can’t wait to go back home. They abandon Millie once again but this time it isn’t Ryler who comes to harass her but the Blissfield Butcher.

He has just stolen a weird dagger from the previous home and is excited to use it on someone already. He could have sold it for money at a black market but to him murdering is more than a career. He chases down Millie who is no athlete but did manage to make half a call to her cop sister just before she is attacked.

So while her mother is asleep after getting drunk, here’s Charlene to the rescue with a gun. The killer stabs Millie in the shoulder because he has a bad aim and is shocked to discover the wound appear on his shoulder as well just as there is crackling lightning and thunder. The scene changes to an altar for a brief moment before Millie is back at the field again. Charlene shoots at the Butcher but he escapes.

Millie is stunned and doesn’t speak much after her mother comes to see her at the police station. Charlene thinks now is the time to argue with her mother rather than help her sister.

Millie drowns out the sounds of their incessant arguments by taking a bath and listening to music but at night is troubled by nightmares.

When Millie awakens the next morning it is Friday the 13th. Time for some freakiness. She sees her surroundings and feels weird. Also, she doesn’t blow a kiss at the poster. She gets up and looks in the mirror and is shocked. It isn’t Millie after all but the Butcher in Millie’s body!

Naturally, the first thing he does is touch and admire his body before he realizes he needs a makeover. In movie-makeovers mean wearing eyeliner and deep red lipstick. And yes, the hair in a ponytail. Millie dressed fine before but now she wears her sister’s jacket and pants and suddenly she’s dropping jaws at school.

The real Millie in the Butcher’s body awakens in a shabby place and on a stinky mattress. She freaks out when she realizes she isn’t just male but a middle-aged one and a serial killer. She runs out only to find people freaking out after looking at her. Turns out Millie had given a description to the police who had made a sketch of the killer whose face is now all over the news.

But Millie’s priority is a bath to get rid of the horrible odour.

At school, Millie behaves obnoxious towards her friends and then goes on to kill all of Millie’s tormentors.

The Butcher/Millie is at school as it is the only place she can take a shower. She realizes the Butcher has taken her place and is creating havoc around the school and decides to enlist her friend’s help. But of course, they don’t believe her and Millie has to convince them by revealing their secrets and the secret handshake.

Millie tells them about the weird dagger she was stabbed by and her friends research online and find the exact dagger (pretty much immediately) known as La Dola. They take it to their Spanish teacher to translate the writing on it because clearly, Josh doesn’t pay attention enough to translate himself. The teacher reprimands him before informing them that the transfer between souls will become permanent in twenty-four hours.

No way does Millie want to be stuck in a middle-aged man’s body and that too a serial killer!

Meanwhile, the serial killer lures Booker but Nyla and Josh save him just in time and now they have to convince Booker that Millie isn’t in Millie’s body but in a serial killer’s body.

Booker isn’t ready to believe that the girl he too secretly had a crush on is now a man more than twenty years his senior.

So Millie has to recite a poem she left in Booker’s locker to convince him and voila! He needs no more convincing.

The serial killer frowns and glares and is all tied up. The friends make a haphazard plan to retrieve the La Dola from the evidence locker. Josh is left in charge of the Butcher, Booker and Millie stay in the car to romance while Nyla puts her life at risk to steal evidence from the police station.

But it is a small town and there isn’t much security and the police on duty is Charlene who can be easily distracted. Nyla creeps in to steal it but Charlene arrives at the wrong time.

Meanwhile, Josh’s mother has arrived and is horrified to see a tied up Millie. Josh explains he is straight and into BDSM but his mother laughs it off because Josh is so obviously not straight. Millie pleads to be let go and then just as the mother is approaching, outsmarts them and escapes.

Booker clearly doesn’t mind Millie is in a man’s body now and kisses him/her. Josh appears with the Butcher running into the police station.

Charlene is obviously not ready to believe her little sister could be in a man’s body. Millie’s friends are ready to believe her but not her own sister.

The serial killer runs away in a police car while Millie manages to overpower her sister and lock her in the cell. The friends now have the dagger in possession.

FREAKY Ending Explained with Spoilers! 

Meanwhile, the jocks at school decide that they can have their fun with a girl they had bullied before but that girl in question is now taken over by a serial killer who kills them all quickly.

Millie and her friends arrive and manage to pin down the Butcher. He is stabbed and the switch is finally made just as the police arrive to shoot down the Butcher.

Everyone thinks they are safe but in a slasher movie, the killer rarely falls down after one strike.

While Millie’s mother is giving her a heartwarming speech about loving her own life, the Butcher breaks in and starts attacking the family. Clearly, the serial killer has forgotten that Charlene is a cop. He also doesn’t know that Millie has now begun to like hurting people. A residue left by the serial killer in her body?

Anyway, Millie finishes him off by stabbing him and the movie ends on her face, showing how pleased she is to kill him.

Just goes to show that you should be careful what you wish for?

Do not wish to be someone else, even for a day, if you don’t know what that person is really like.

Scare scale: 3.5/5

 

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