Tit Up
“To imagine even a year ago that blending ‘80s slasher cliches and body swap comedy would result in an intelligent, gleefully entertaining feature seems unworkable sans hindsight. Yet Freaky expertly jumps through comic absurdity, splatter effects, and modern social commentary regarding high school life. Newton’s turn as Millie begins idyllic, visual clues shattering the illusion. Then come the bullies, undoubtedly doomed, but making the heroes accepting, pure, and comfortable in who they are.”
Read our full Blu-ray review of Freaky for more
Video
Aside from moments of noise, Freaky makes an immediate impression on UHD. Hefty contrast makes the HDR shine, enlivening each light source. HDR plays a vital role in this disc upgrade. Wandering through the mini-golf, blacklight-lit Halloween area is a stunner. Black levels don’t achieve the same noticeable bump, if providing enough shadow thickness to suffice.
Detail isn’t anything significant compared to the Blu-ray, although sharpness does reach a pleasing peak. Texture can erode due to noise. That’s on the source, not Scream Factory’s encode; the Blu-ray did the same, and this 4K release handles it better (if barely).
Routine color grading lets primaries breathe. Flesh tones remain steady no matter the overall tone, which varies from cool to warm, scene dependent.
Audio
Using the range of this DTS-HD track for frights, music stings slam into the low-end, nailing their shock value. Attacks from Vaughn lead to exaggerated boom, whether dropping toilet seats on victim’s heads or tossing them into walls. Subtle this is not, fantastic in bolstering the kills. When the body swap happens, powerful thunder leaves a mark. Nightmares afterward do the same.
Surrounds play with swirling voices. Stalker footsteps pan between the rears, fun in delivering precision and aiding the fear. For a 5.1 mix, the soundstage works the available channels to successfully mimic something wider.
Extras
Coming first, a deleted scenes trio, running 5:27 in total. An EPK focused on Vaughn/Newton barely breaks two minutes. Another brief featurette EPK details the kill effects, the next another for EPK for director Christopher Landon. Then, a look at Newton’s character for a few minutes.
For anything meaty, turn to the commentary with Landon, which to note is on both the UHD and Blu-ray.
Freaky
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Movie
Lively, hilarious, and energetic, Freaky conquers the slasher genre with a great premise and self-aware social consciousness.
User Review
( vote)The following six screen shots serve as samples for our subscription-exclusive set of 40 full resolution uncompressed 4K screen shots grabbed directly from the UHD:
Matt Paprocki
Matt Paprocki has critiqued home media and video games for 20 years across outlets like Washington Post, Variety, Rolling Stone, Forbes, IGN, Playboy, Polygon, Ars, and others. His current passion project is the technically minded DoBlu.com. You can read Matt's body of work via his personal WordPress blog, and follow him on Twitter @Matt_Paprocki.