I’m not exactly sure when I went from enjoying Freaky to being incredibly enamored with it, but it was probably the moment that Vince Vaughn sashayed across a busy street, his arms up and dangling as if he just received a lesson from Paulette Bonafonté. Sure, I love the juxtaposition of a tall, brusque and masculine man strutting his stuff with the soul of a teenage girl dancing inside because it’s physical comedy gold. But coming hot off the presses of the most aggro roles possible in movies with evocative names like Dragged Across the Concrete and The Brawl in Cellblock 99, seeing Vince embrace a more feminine and nuanced character had me gagging and snapping my fingers in glee.

Frankly, Vince Vaughn. ‘Shantay, you slay!

A cold open establishes the urban legend of the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn), a serial killer who began chopping people up in either the 70s or the 90s...depending on who you ask. Like most urban legends, the story changes but the fact remains: he’s as vicious and silent as a Vorhees. And within the first ten minutes, Freaky fully embraces its slasher roots in the most R-rated fashion. Spears will be thrown. Bodies will be impaled. Heads will be splattered and wine bottles will be...er...deepthroated to shattering effect as the Butcher strikes again. But along with the murderous beginning, the cold open also bequeaths him with a new, mysterious knife that will change his life forever.

The next morning, Millie (Kathryn Newton) wakes up in her home, ready for school. Millie feels like the quintessential final girl and, in fact, she brings to mind Lisa Wilcox’s Alice in A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Master, my favorite of the final girls. Like Alice, Millie is dealing with the loss of one parent and the resulting alcoholism and shattered dreams of the surviving parent. Her police officer sister Char (Dana Dori) is so far from the punk roots as Alice’s brother, but she still has that swagger and confidence that Millie lacks.

And while her mother isn’t like Alice’s verbally abusive father, Coral (Katie Finneran) covers her immense sadness with alcohol and a smothering personality, guilt-tripping Millie to skip Homecoming to go see Wicked at the local theatre Anis (which she adorable calls Anus). Moments like this show that writers Michael Kennedy and Christopher Landon have their finger on the pulse of slasher history while eying the future of the subgenre that Christopher Landon began to explore in Happy Death Day and its unconventional sequel.

On her way to school, we’re introduced to her two best friends, the tropey and flippantly gay Josh (Misha Osherovich) and Nyla (Celeste O’Connor) followed by Millie’s jock crush Booker (Uriah Shelton). What starts as a typical day takes a turn that night, when her mother passes out on the couch, leaving Millie stranded after the Homecoming football game and putting her squarely in the path of The Butcher. While the slasher is able to successfully chase and stab Millie before chased off by Char, his mysterious new knife has plans other than murder. As the clock ticks midnight on Friday the 13th, Millie and The Butcher swap bodies and Millie is given the ticking clock of 24 hours to stab...er...herself...with the knife or else the swap will become permanent.

What co-screenwriter Michael Kennedy and co-screenwriter/director Christopher Landon have created in Freaky is so much better than an elevator pitch of “The Hot Chick Meets Jason” would suggest. While the script does hit familiar beats for both the body swap subgenre and the supernatural slasher genre, how it tells the story by mixing in gore, scares, laughs and heart ultimately elevates the silly-but-fun premise. From a slasher perspective, Michael and Christopher spray the screen with copious amounts of the red stuff and inventive kills (one word: shop class). From a body swap perspective, Vince Vaughn’s performance is appropriately dainty but it also mimics the wallflower, uncertain performance that Kathryn initially imbues Millie with.

Conversely, Millie takes on the dead-eyed and soulless Butcher and Kathryn completely nails the performance. In one of my favorite subtle moments, Millie initially awakens as The Butcher and she sits up in bed, looking at the girly fuzziness around her. And as her mom sticks her head in the room, Millie’s retainer falls out of her slack-jawed mouth in a mix of revulsion and confusion. Then, she enters the school with a swaggy confidence that, when matched with the smart costume design that coifs her in a ponytail and leather jacket, again brought to mind Alice’s transformation in The Dream Master. It’s a little moment but Freaky is filled with them and it helps elevate the performances.

Gender swapping is inherently queer and Freaky plays with gender conventions in fun and surprising ways. Sure, there’s the way we approach gender now, with Nyla correcting the pronoun usage surrounding the Butcher in Millie’s body and the direct exploration of labels. But it was actually the way Michael and Christopher script the relationship between Booker and Millie that really surprised me. Seeing the tender way the romance between Booker and Millie-in-The-Butcher’s-Body blooms was amazing to see in a mass-marketed horror film.

I unabashedly loved Freaky. It’s the perfect mix of horror and humor that Happy Death Day gave us mixed with incredibly quippy and quotable dialogue. “I didn’t come here to clam jam with you,” will forever have a place in my brain now. And the fact that this slasher was written and directed by two gay men, warms my cold gay heart. Slashers are a subgenre for the outsiders and to be able to see two queer men play around with the genre feels like a minor triumph in a year filled with so much disappointment.

Christopher and Michael have given us a modern answer to my favorite final girl and used these two diametrically opposed personalities to allow Millie to explore her identity and personality and, ultimately, allow her to come into her own by embracing both the masculine and feminine. So while the humor is biting and the violence gushing, it’s the modern reinterpretation of Alice Johnson, clad in a leather jacket, hair pulled back in that “I mean business” ponytail that tells me the slasher genre is ready to return in the 21th century with a caustic vengeance.

And I’m here for it.