Review: Queer Christmas Slasher 'It's A Wonderful Knife' Has A Hohohollow Ring
Like "Scream" from "Nativity," "It's a Wonderful Knife" tries its best to combine both genres as a guardian angel tries to save his favorite stars. The movie you're stuck in.
You can see how the ridiculous and popular name got the green light. For this reason, few horror films contain multiple main and supporting characters. But writer-producer Michael Kennedy (screenwriter of 2020's Freaky) must be wittier and funnier than anyone else in Frank Capra's 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life, a satirical look at the Last Daughter's desire to heal her trauma. . . And director Tyler McIntyre (“Tragedy Girls”) serves them faithfully here.
Teen Winnie Carruthers (Yellow Jackets' Jane Widdup) has a bright future ahead of her when the holidays arrive in idyllic Angel Falls, a Hallmark Channel-ready town that has been quietly dubbed the "Christmas Capital of the World." Then on December 24, a masked killer murders her best friend Kara (Hannah Huggins) before Vinnie can intervene. Henry Waters (Justin Long), her ruthless real estate tycoon father (Joel McHale), was hard at work on a sinister land development scheme.
After nearly a year without treatment, Winnie becomes depressed, gets expelled from art school, and discovers her boyfriend is cheating on her. Most of the time you cannot understand how everyone is living happily. “No school, no best friend, no boyfriend, no one cares,” she says, wishing she had never been born. Like Capra's suicidal hero, he gets his wish only to find himself in an alternate reality where, without him, the murderous "Angel" claims dozens more victims and turns Angel Falls into a watery hell.
So, the real story begins with this low-budget horror-comedy, which is essentially about Vinnie trying to convince her family and friends that she knows who the killer is. In this timeline, her beloved brother Jimmy (Eden Howard) becomes the victim, leaving her grieving father and mother Judy (Erin Boyce), an ex, devastated. But his Aunt Jill (Catherine Isabelle's "Ginger Snps") and schoolgirl Bernie (Jess McLeod) trust him. Team up to stop the murder, return Winnie to her real life and... what's the point of it all?
Like the better conceived and executed Killer, The Knife sets a familiar precedent in the slasher genre. But since the plot continues to move poorly and throw random elements at the wall (the mystery of the mysterious northern lights, mind control, a slow-burn romance), not only does it become boring at times, but its purpose is completely forgotten. . Vinny wants to die first. (It's funny because part of his attitude is because everyone around him has stopped caring about the horrific murder of his best friend, one of the film's few non-white main characters. And the film doesn't seem to care.)
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McIntyre, a genre director who recently worked on Five Nights at Freddy's, covers the hallways in blood and gore (a giant lollipop, forcefully dislodged by a teenager's makeup, is an ominous image). But "The Knife" breezes through its grisly scenes without wasting any time creating any real fear or excitement, leaving behind a cheap, pointless death that has little impact on the hero, let alone the audience. Long has free reign as a painted villain with Trumpian ambitions, but he's less effective in Barbarian, his latest film in the genre.
Even the angel design, a fluffy white ensemble with a full-face mask, seems to have been created or mass-produced to look cool on the poster rather than to add anything. Cinema legend.
The bright spots mostly come from the good chemistry between the leads. The versatile Widdop steers the film through some of its most surprising tonal confusion, while McLeod brings tenderness, sensitivity and a moment of triumph to what should attract more and better roles in the future.
The main embarrassment is “The Knife”, “You are George Bailey!” This is an obstacle to the exchange of gestures. “Will you be mine, Clarence?” But the cast makes the most of what they have to offer, with additional mentions from McHale as tormented father David, Sean Deppner as watery brother Buck, and Isabel Gale as one of the few adults to win the MVP title. Even before the Christmas wish doesn't come true, Vinnie can already see it.
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The film's popular themes of focusing on marginalized and vulnerable youth facing self-harm are at least well-intentioned. And when Ma Carruthers hangs a rainbow ornament on the tree for insulting Jimmy, “My Boy Is Gay,” well, will she even try?
But while this stripped-down version of small-town American high culture makes room for LGBTQ+ and non-binary inclusivity, it's surprising how The Knife allows its few characters of color and its victims to falter. Which ends in saccharin. (To be fair, the killer doesn't seem biased.) We see some progress in Angel Falls, but of course, it's another white Christmas.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
