Review: ‘The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It,’ starring Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson

June 1, 2021

by Carla Hay

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson in “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” (Photo by Ben Rothstein/Warner Bros. Pictures)

“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It”

Directed by Michael Chaves

Culture Representation: Taking place in Connecticut and Massachusetts in 1981, the horror sequel “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Asians and Hispanics) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A husband and a wife, who are well-known demonologists/paranormal investigators, get involved in a murder case to try to prove that the defendant was possessed by an evil spirit when he committed the murder. 

Culture Audience: Besides appealing to the obvious target audience of people who are fans of “The Conjuring” franchise, “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” will appeal to people who are interested in horror movies that blend the supernatural with real-life legal drama.

Vera Farmiga, Ruairi O’Connor, Vince Pisani, Sarah Catherine Hook and Patrick Wilson in “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

How much people might enjoy “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” will depend on how much they can tolerate “The Conjuring” universe taking a “Law & Order”-like turn in this particular sequel. That’s because demonologist/paranormal investigator spouses Ed Warren (played by Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Wilson (played by Vera Farmiga) go beyond the typical haunted house/exorcism storylines of previous “The Conjuring” movies and get involved in a murder case to the point where the Warrens are investigating crime scenes like detectives and giving legal advice like attorneys.

It has the potential to make “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” a convoluted mess. But somehow, it all works out to be a satisfying horror thriller that makes up for its predictability with good performances, some terrifying visual effects and overall suspenseful pacing. The movie also has some unexpected touches of humor and romance that take some of the edge off this grim and gruesome story.

Directed by Michael Chaves and written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” (also known as “The Conjuring 3”) is inspired by a true story from the case files of the real-life Ed and Lorraine Warren. The case was about Arne Cheyenne Johnson, who stabbed his 40-year-old landlord to death in Brookfield, Connecticut, in 1981, when Johnson was 19 years old. Johnson admitted to the stabbing but pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.

His defense? The devil made him do it. Johnson claimed that during the stabbing, he had been possessed by the devil, which entered his body a few months before, during an exorcism of an 11-year-old boy named David Glatzel, who happened to be the younger brother of Arne’s girlfriend Debbie Glatzel. It was the first known U.S. murder case where demonic possession was used as a defense argument.

In real life, the Warrens got involved in the case because they were at this exorcism that was the catalyst for this tragic turn of events. And the Warrens ended up testifying on behalf of Johnson. (The trial doesn’t happen until toward the end of the movie.)

“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” begins with an effectively horrifying re-enactment of the exorcism of David Glatzel (played by Julian Hilliard), which takes place in the movie at the Glatzel home on July 18, 1981. In the movie, David is 8 years old, not 11. Ed and Lorraine Warren are at the exorcism, along with Arne (played by Ruairi O’Connor) and Arne’s live-in girlfriend Debbie (played by Sarah Catherine Hook), who have a very loyal and loving relationship.

Arne and Debbie are both in their late teens and live in another house in Brookfield. Also at the exorcism are David and Debbie’s father Carl Glatzel (played by Paul Wilson); David and Debbie’s mother Judy Glatzel (played by Charlene Amoia); and the Warrens’ videographer/assistant Drew Thomas (played by Shannon Kook), who is filming this exorcism.

When the movie begins, it’s implied that the exorcism has been going on for hours, with David showing ebbs and flows in his demonic possession. At one point, David has reached such a state of exhaustion that Arne takes David up to David’s bedroom to tuck the boy into bed. Arne is depicted as a mild-mannered and polite person.

Arne tells David, “You’re one brave kid. I was a little runt growing up, so I know what it’s like to be picked on, but that was nothing compared to what you’re going through.” David says, “I don’t feel very brave.” Arne replies, “Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you’re scared, but you’re hanging in there. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”

David then says, “Arne when are you going to ask my sister to marry you?” Arne replies with a slightly embarrassed tone, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Despite this friendly banter, there’s a lingering sense of danger in the air. Arne looks outside David’s bedroom window and sees that a priest has arrived by taxi.

The priest is Father Gordon (played by Steve Coulter), who will be the official exorcist for David. Whatever evil spirits are around seem to know that a clergy person is there, because all hell breaks loose soon after the arrival of Father Gordon. David starts attacking like a demon child, beginning with stabbing his father in the leg. He goes through various contortions. And the inside of the house begins to look like a full-force tornado with swirling gusts of evil.

During this chaos, possessed David attacks Ed, who is knocked down on the ground. Arne sees that the demon won’t leave David’s body, so Arne grabs the possessed child and shouts at the demon: “Leave him alone and take me!” And not long after that, David calms down, but Arne won’t be the same. And neither will Ed, because he’s had a heart attack during this exorcism.

It’s a powerful way to begin the movie, which grabs viewers’ attention from this opening sequence and keeps this heightened level of tension throughout the film. David seems to be “cured,” but Arne starts having nightmarish visions. There’s a sinister-looking woman (played by Eugenie Bondurant) who keeps appearing in the visions, with a clear intent to harm Arne. For example, the first time that she attacks Arne, she starts to strangle him, but he’s able to stop it when he comes out of his trance.

At first, Arne doesn’t tell anyone about his visions because he doesn’t want people to think that he’s crazy. But then, things happen to the point where he can no longer keep it a secret that strange things have been happening to him. It’s eventually revealed in the movie who this evil-looking woman is and her ultimate malicious intent.

Ed’s heart attack lands him in a hospital emergency room. He’s eventually released, but he has to use a wheelchair for a good deal of the story. Over time (this movie takes place over a six-month period, from May to November 1981), Ed doesn’t need the wheelchair anymore, but he has to use a cane. “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” includes a flashback to May 1981, when the Glatzels moved into the home that appears to be where the family first encountered the demon, which attacked David in a memorable scene involving a water bed.

Meanwhile, Arne and Debbie are trying to get their lives back to normal. Arne works for a tree service company, and Debbie works for Brookfield Boarding Kennels, a pet service company that’s located inside a two-story house. Debbie and Arne live in the house rent-free as part of her job. It’s a house that’s filled with barking dogs kept in cages when they’re inside.

In a conversation that takes place after the exorcism, Arne suggests to Debbie that they move away from Brookfield. He also drops hints that they should eventually get married. Debbie seems reluctant to move away from Brookfield because she and Arne can’t really afford to move yet and she doesn’t want to live too far away from her family. However, she tells Arne that she’ll think about it.

The owner of Brookfield Boarding Kennels is a creepy drunk named Bruno Salz (played by Ronnie Gene Blevins), who has an underpaid Debbie doing most of the work. She’s very responsible and caring in her job, where she’s essentially the manager and bookkeeper for the business. And that’s another reason why Debbie doesn’t really want to move: She’s afraid that the dogs won’t be taken care of very well if flaky Bruno is left in charge of the kennel.

Bruno has been pestering Arne to repair Bruno’s broken stereo in the house’s living room. And one day, when the stereo is repaired, Bruno decides to crank up the music and have an impromptu party with Debbie, Arne and plenty of alcohol. Bruno plays Blondie’s “Call Me” full blast on the stereo and starts dancing with an uncomfortable-looking Debbie. (“Call Me” will be featured in another part of the movie too.)

Suddenly, Arne seems to be losing touch with reality. And this is where he’s supposed to be possessed by the demon. There’s an almost psychedelic nightmare that’s depicted on screen. And by the end, it’s revealed that Bruno was stabbed to death by Arne. (The stabbing is never shown on screen.) The murder in the movie takes place in September 1981, but in real life, the murder happened on February 16, 1981. It was the first murder in Brookfield’s history.

In a daze, Arne walks down a deserted road, with blood on his hands and clothes. A police officer (played by Chris Greene) in a patrol car stops to ask Arne what’s going on. And that’s when Arne says, “I think I hurt someone.” Arne is arrested for Bruno’s murder. And guess who’s coming back to Brookfield to investigate?

Fans of mystery solving will appreciate the added storyline of Ed and Lorraine Warren doing a lot of detective-like investigating, as the Warrens dig deep to find out the origins of this evil spirit that seems to have taken possession of Arne. In the movie, the demon isn’t inside of Arne all of the time. Arne is placed in the psychiatric ward in the local jail, and he’s a fairly passive prisoner most of the time. But there are moments when the demon comes back to haunt and possibly harm Arne.

In the movie, the Warrens are depicted as being the ones to convince Arne’s defense attorney Meryl (played by Ashley LeConte Campbell) to use demonic possession as a defense argument for Arne. It’s an unprecedented legal strategy that Meryl is convinced won’t work, until Ed and Lorraine show the attorney what they found in their demonologist research over the years. Debbie and the rest of the Glatzel family fully believe that Arne was possessed when he killed Bruno, so the Glatzels are supportive of Arne before and during the trial.

The Warrens take it upon themselves to help gather evidence for this case, but they also want to see if they can get rid of this demonic spirit that they believe exists. The Warrens’ investigation leads them to Danvers, Massachusetts, where they find out how the mysterious case of two teenage girls who were best friends is somehow connected to Arne’s case.

The teenagers are named Katie Lincoln (played by Andrea Andrade) and Jessica Louise Strong (played by Ingrid Bisu), who went missing in May 1981. Katie was found murdered, while Jessica is still missing. The Warrens also track down a former priest whose last name is Kastner (played by John Noble), who might have some answers about this particular demon.

Along the way, Ed and Lorraine also get help from a jail priest named Father Newman (played by Vince Pisani) and a police detective in Danvers named Sergeant Clay (played by Keith Arthur Bolden), who is skeptical at first about helping the Warrens. But then, things happen that change Sergeant Clay’s mind. The movie has a few far-fetched things in the story, such as Sergeant Clay being willing to share his case files with Ed and Lorraine, when in reality that’s a serious breach of police protocol.

And some of the horror scenes are over-the-top with visual effects happening in a very “only in a movie” way, instead of depicting what the real exorcisms probably looked like. The amount of body contortions alone would break bones and put someone in a hospital. But elaborate scare spectacles are what people who watch horror movies like this expect to see.

“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” delivers in a way that’s effectively chilling but not as disturbing as 1973’s “The Exorcist,” the gold standard for exorcism movies. However, “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” is a vast improvement over director Chaves’ feature-film directorial debut: the bland 2019 horror flick “The Curse of La Llorona.” Because of Arne’s murder trial, there’s a lot more at stake than the usual attempts to rid a person or a house of an evil spirit.

“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” is also helped by a suitably convincing production design (by Jennifer Spence), which involves a lot of dusty, dark and unsettling places. And it’s easy to see why the movie changed the seasonal time period to the late summer/early autumn, instead of winter, because cinematographer Michael Burgess effectively uses a lot of autumn-like brown and gold for the exterior shots to contrast with the black and gray of the biggest horror scenes in the film. “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” would have looked like a very different movie if it took place in the winter.

Viewers will also see little bit more backstory to Ed and Lorraine’s relationship. In brief romantic flashback scenes, it’s shown how the couple met: Thirty years prior, when Ed and Lorraine were both 17 years old, Lorraine (played by Megan Ashley Brown) went with some friends to a movie theater, where Ed (played by Mitchell Hoog) was working as an usher. It was attraction at first sight, and they began dating shortly afterward.

The movie doesn’t have these scenes as filler. Lorraine is reminiscing about this courtship because of Ed’s near-death scare with his heart attack. It’s caused her to reflect on their longtime relationship. And it’s made the couple appreciate their marriage and partnership even more.

But the movie also has a few touches of comic relief, by showing some of the personal dynamics between this longtime married couple. There are some subtle references to the gender roles that were and still are expected of couples who work together. In “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It,” Lorraine has to take charge of much of the literal physical legwork in the investigation because of Ed’s recovery from his heart attack.

In a scene where Ed and Lorraine want to investigate a cellar in the Glatzel house, Ed (who is using a cane) realistically won’t be able to crawl around in the cellar. However, Ed tells Lorraine, who tends to dress like a prim and proper schoolteacher: “Honey, let me handle it. You’re going to ruin your dress if you go in there … Be careful.” With an “I can handle it” expression on her face, Lorraine calmly says, “Just hold my purse,” as she hands her purse to Ed. It’s a very realistic and hilarious moment that says it all about how women are often underestimated by men.

The film also shows Ed’s frustration at not being able to physically move around in the way that he’s been used to for all of his life. His anxiety isn’t portrayed in a heavy-handed way, but it’s a nod to the lifestyle adjustments that people who’ve been able-bodied have to go through when they find themselves disabled, even if it’s a temporary disabled condition. Ed does some griping about it, but not in a way that’s too self-pitying.

In a scene where Ed and Lorraine leave a courthouse after a preliminary hearing for Arne, observant viewers will notice that Ed needs to be carried in his wheelchair down the courtroom steps. It’s because the story takes place nine years before the Americans With Disabilities Act made it federal law in 1990 for buildings to provide reasonable access for disabled people. Nowadays, a courtroom building with outdoor steps, such as the building depicted in the movie, is also supposed to have ramps for people who use wheelchairs or walkers.

Since the first “The Conjuring” movie was released in 2013, Farmiga and Wilson have settled into these roles with a charming familiarity. Lorraine is the more level-headed and articulate one in this couple, while Ed (and his East Coast dialect slang) is the more approachable and down-to-earth spouse. Farmiga and Wilson are believable as a couple with a very deep love and respect for each other.

The rest of the cast members are perfectly fine in their roles, but the characters that are new to “The Conjuring” franchise for this movie were clearly written as only for this movie. The character of Arne is a little on the generic side, but O’Connor does an admirable job of conveying Arne’s inner turmoil. Bondurant’s role as the mystery woman who’s been plaguing Arne definitely brings a menacing aura to the movie, but she hardly says anything, so her presence is literally more muted than it needs to be.

Make no mistake: Ed and Lorraine Warren are the main characters for viewers to be the most invested in emotionally. In “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It,” Lorraine’s psychic abilities are a major part of the story. People might have mixed feelings about how these psychic visions are depicted in the movie and how much of this real-life case was embellished into a Hollywood version.

But just like the rest of the story, “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” isn’t about trying to explain a lot of things that can’t be explained by scientific facts. Whether or not viewers believe that demonic spirits exist, “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” succeeds in providing plenty of memorable horror that makes it a worthy part of “The Conjuring” universe.

Warner Bros. Pictures will release “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” in U.S. cinemas and on HBO Max on June 4, 2021. The movie was released in the United Kingdom on May 26, 2021.

Review: ‘Freaky,’ starring Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton

November 13, 2020

by Carla Hay

Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton in “Freaky” (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures)

“Freaky”

Directed by Christopher Landon

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional U.S. city of Blissfield, the horror comedy “Freaky” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A 17-year-old girl and a middle-aged serial killer swap bodies in a freak magical spell accident. 

Culture Audience: “Freaky” will appeal primarily to people who like teen-oriented horror with adult humor and who have a high tolerance for bloody gore.

Kathryn Newton, Celeste O’Connor and Misha Osherovich in “Freaky” (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures)

The horror comedy “Freaky” is a zany and often-raucous ride that puts a gruesome but memorable spin on the body-swapping concept. The entire premise of the movie is “Freaky Friday” meets “Friday the 13th.” Directed by Christopher Landon (who co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Kennedy), “Freaky” delivers as many laughs as it does explicitly brutal scares with all of the violent murders that happen throughout the entire story.

“Freaky” also cleverly lampoons many of the clichés and over-used tropes in teen comedies and horror movies. “Freaky” is from Blumhouse Productions, the same production company behind Landon-directed horror flicks “Happy Death Day” and “Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones.” Blumhouse movies have been “hit or miss,” in terms of quality. “Freaky” is a definite hit.

The movie begins in the fictional U.S. city of Blissfield, with four teenagers hanging out and partying at night at the upper-middle-class home of one of the teens. The house belongs to the parents of Ginny (played by Kelly Lamor Wilson), who looks like a popular blonde cheerleader type. Ginny’s parents are away on a trip, which is why Ginny and her friends have the house to themselves. The other three teenagers at the house are Ginny’s boyfriend Evan (played by Mitchell Hoog); Sandra (played by Emily Holder); and Isaac (played by Nicholas Stargel). Evan and Isaac are athletic types, while Sandra is a sensible brunette type.

It’s Wednesday, November 11. While the teens are gathered in the living room and drinking alcohol, they start talking about the urban legend of the the Blissfield Butcher, also known as The Butcher, a mysterious serial killer who began murdering people, especially teenagers during homecoming season, back in the 1990s. This serial killer, who seems to have stopped his murder spree in the 2000s, was never caught.

Is he dead? Is he in prison for another crime? Or did he just disappear and become a law-abiding citizen? No one seems to know, but the teens have a laugh at how “geriatric” the killer would be if he were still alive. It’s at this point that horror aficionados know that the killer will be somewhere in the house and ready to go on a rampage.

Sure enough, The Butcher (played by Vince Vaughn) has somehow snuck in the house. (He wears a mask, just like a prototypical serial killer such as Jason Vorhees from the “Friday the 13th” movies or Michael Myers from “Halloween” movies.) And one by one, The Butcher kills all four teenagers, who each have vicious deaths. The Butcher ambushes Isaac in a wine cellar and rams a wine bottle down his throat. The killer then traps Sandra in a bathroom and repeatedly slams a toilet seat on her head, in order to beat her to death.

The Butcher than chases Evan onto to the home’s tennis court, breaks a tennis racket in two, and uses both ends to simultaneously stab Evan on both sides of his head. As for Jenny, she manages to hide and elude the killer for a while, but he eventually finds her and impales her on the wall of the living room. That gives you an idea of how over-the-top the murders are. And The Butcher has stolen a rare dagger in a glass case that’s in the living room.

The next day (Thursday the November 12), a widowed mother and her two daughters, who all live in the same house, are gathered around the dining table for breakfast. Coral Kessler (played by Katie Finneran), who’s a sales clerk at a department store called Discount Bonanza, has been a widow for about a year. (It’s never stated how her husband died.) Coral’s older daughter Charlene Kessler (played by Dana Drori) is in her 20s and is a police officer in Blissfield. Carol’s younger daughter Millie Kessler (played by Kathryn Newton) is 17 years old and a senior at Blissfield Valley High School.

There’s tension in the household because Charlene disapproves of how Coral has been overprotective of Millie and has been using Millie as an emotional crutch. Coral has also been drinking heavily and tries to keep it a secret, but her daughters know that Coral has been drinking so much that she sometimes passes out. Coral goes to great lengths to hide her depression by putting on a falsely chipper demeanor.

Blissfield Valley High School is having a homecoming dance, but Millie tells Charlene that she won’t be there. Why? Because Millie and Coral made plans to see a regional production of “Wicked” together. Coral thinks that homecoming dances are just excuses for teenagers to get drunk or cause mischief, so she’d rather have Millie be safe and keep her company. Charlene thinks it’s pathetic that Coral won’t let Millie have any fun in ways that teenagers in high school are supposed to have fun.

Millie’s two best friends at her school are smart and outspoken Nyla Chones (played by Celeste O’Connor) and openly gay and sassy Josh Detmer (played by Misha Osherovich), who think that Millie is also missing out on a lot of fun by catering to Coral’s needs over her own. Millie is very introverted and too shy to do anything about her crush on a fellow student named Booker (played by Uriah Shelton), who sits next to her in their woodworking class.

The instructor of the woodworking class is Mr. Fletcher (played by Alan Ruck), who belittles Millie any chance that he gets. Every teen-oriented horror movie seems to have clique of bullies. In “Freaky,” there’s not one but two of these cliques.

The “mean girls” clique is led by a queen bee named Ryler (played by Melissa Collazo), who corners Millie at her locker to make snide comments about Millie’s discount clothes. Ryler is a stereotypical, conceited snob who cares more designer labels and other superficial things instead of someone’s character. She’s also a gossip who like to get “dirt” on other people and use it to her advantage.

The “bullying jocks” clique—Phil (played by Magnus Diehl), Squi (Tim Johnson) and Brett (played by Ezra Sexton)—make sexist and crude comments about Millie. (One of them says they would only have sex with Millie if she had a paper bag over her head.) Booker is a friend to these lunkheads, but he doesn’t participate in bullying Millie. However, Booker doesn’t exactly stop his pals from making mean-spirited comments to Millie either.

Early on in the movie, before Millie goes through a transformation, certain students at the school make offhand comments implying that Millie a mousy plain Jane. It’s a little hard to believe, given that Newton looks like a pretty Hollywood actress throughout the entire movie. The way that some of the mean girls treat her, you’d think that she comes to school in rags, but Millie’s wardrobe isn’t out of the ordinary.

It isn’t long before news spreads all over the high school about the four murdered teens who were killed the night before. However, the homecoming football game that night isn’t about to be cancelled. Millie is a beaver mascot for the school’s football team, the Blissfield Valley Beavers. It’s a thankless job and she gets no respect for it. In fact, some of the “cool kids” make fun of Millie when she wears the costume.

We get it. Millie is bullied by a lot of people at school. And that means when a serial killer inhabits her body, watch out.

The body swap happens after the football game, when everyone has gone home and Millie is stuck on a bench outside the football field, waiting for her mother to pick her up. Coral hasn’t been answering Millie’s calls and text messages because she’s passed out drunk. It’s late at night, there’s a killer on the loose, and Millie is getting scared because her phone battery has died. Right before her phone stopped working, Millie was able to call home and talk briefly with her sister Charlene, who had just arrived at the house and told Millie that their mother was passed out drunk again.

It’s now past midnight. And it’s Friday the 13th. And then, just like a typical serial killer in a slasher movie, The Butcher appears from out of nowhere and chases after Millie. He catches up to her in the football field and stabs her in the shoulder with the dagger that he stole. The heavens open up and some strange mystical things happen because that particular dagger has been used.

By this time, The Butcher has his mask off and is about to kill Millie. Just then, Charlene shows up (because she knew that Millie needed a ride home) and sees Millie being attacked. Charlene fires her gun, the killer runs away, but the dagger is accidentally left behind. The dagger is brought to the police station as evidence.

The next morning, Millie wakes up in her bed. It must be the fastest recovery ever from a stab wound. There’s no mention of Millie ever being in a hospital to get the wound treated. Maybe that’s because the hospital would’ve found out the same thing that this person who’s woken up in Millie’s bedroom has found out: Although the body looks like Millie’s, the person inside the body is the Blissfield Butcher. Likewise, Millie has now discovered that she is in the body of the Blissfield Butcher, who lives in a creepy loft-like place that’s filled with morbid-looking souvenirs and decorations.

When Millie finds out that she now looks like The Butcher, she goes to school to tell Josh and Nyla about the transformation. Nyla and Josh are predictably freaked out and don’t believe it first. There’s a big chase scene where they think The Butcher is trying to kill them. A police sketch of the serial-killer suspect, which was presumably based on Charlene’s eyewitness description, has been shown in the media and it’s a pretty good composite drawing of The Butcher.

While Josh and Nyla run through a school hallway to try to escape what they think is The Butcher, Josh shouts to Nyla, “You’re black! I’m gay! We are so dead!” It’s snarky commentary on the stereotype of someone from a minority group dying first in a horror movie.

Millie ends up convincing Josh and Nyla that she really is in The Butcher’s body, by telling them things only Millie would know. Through basic research, the three pals find out something important about the dagger that was used in the attack on Millie: The dagger is an ancient Aztec artifact called The Dola, which was used in ritual sacrifices. If two souls swap bodies while The Dola is being used, the souls have 24 hours to get back in the correct bodies—using The Dola in the same way that it was used when the souls were transferred—or else they will be trapped in the wrong bodies forever.

And so begins the race against time to get the The Dola dagger. The expected hijinks ensue about mistaken identity. And because the two people in this body-swapping comedy are of opposite genders, there are the predictable gags about male/female body parts and sexually suggestive situations that happen with people who don’t know about the body swap.

Because so much of “Freaky” has a lot of teen slang and of-the-moment technology, the movie is eventually going to look very dated. But the performances from the cast will make “Freaky” a crowd-pleaser for generations to come. Newton and Vaughn are hilarious to watch as they inhabit the personalities of Millie and The Butcher who are trapped in the wrong bodies. The humor goes a long way in taking some of the disturbing edge off of the horrific murders that are depicted in the movie.

Meanwhile, Osherovich is a total scene stealer who has some of the best lines in the movie. Some people might take issue with how his Josh character might be perceived as a flamboyant gay stereotype. However, Osherovich brings a lot of authenticity and respect to the role, which shows what it’s like to be a teenager who’s proud to be gay. Rather than being marginal tokens, Josh and Nyla actually do a lot of heroic things in the movie.

“Freaky” does a great balancing act of embracing horror clichés in a satirical way while rejecting other horror clichés in a defiant way. And there are a few surprisingly sweet sentimental moments. “Freaky” has some plot holes and very predictable scenes, but that doesn’t take away from how well the cast members portray these characters under the competent direction of Landon. The violence in the movie is cruel, but the movie has an underlying message of tolerance in showing how people shouldn’t be judged by their appearances alone.

Universal Pictures released “Freaky” in U.S. cinemas on November 13, 2020.

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