SWAP CHOP

HAPPY DEATH DAY DIRECTOR CHRIS LANDON RETURNS WITH POST-SLASHER COMEDY-HORROR FREAKY, A FREAKY FRIDAY MEETS FRIDAY THE 13TH MEETS MEAN GIRLS FREAKSHOW YOU CAN’T LOOK AWAY FROM

- JAMIE TABBERER

GO FUCK YOURSELF!” You’ll have to trust us on this one: director extraordinaire Christopher Landon is speaking purely hypothetically… and with a riotous laugh. His strong reaction is understandable: SFX has just asked what his message would be to horror genre cynics who jump to conclusions about his new film Freaky and dismiss it as “just another slasher movie”. Because let’s face it, there have been rather a few since John Carpenter basically invented the subgenre with 1978’s Halloween.

“I’d say, that’s the whole point of this movie: we’re expecting you to have seen slasher movies,” he elaborates, before citing the film’s crucial sci-fi twist: “We’re expecting you to have seen body-swap movies [too]. But what you haven’t seen – yet – is a body-swap movie that collides with a slasher. But I stand by my original answer: go fuck yourselves!”

Landon sums up Freaky’s plot as “about a young, shy high school girl [Millie] who swaps bodies with a serial killer,” combining the tropes of films as disparate as Scream, Mean Girls, and the recent Jumanji films in one simple premise. Or, as co-writer Michael Kennedy more succinctly put it in his initial pitch to Landon, “‘Freaky Friday meets Friday The 13th’. My ears perked up!”

“This is the first time I’ve ever written a movie with another writer,” Landon says, admitting such collaboration was “something I’ve always feared because I’m a bit of a control freak.”

His control freakery has served him well in the past: although best known as the director of the Happy Death Day movies, Landon has worked prolifically as a writer. One of his earliest hits was 2007’s