A young woman finds herself in a terrifying version of her town when she
wishes she had never been born.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Tyler MacIntyre
Starring: Jane Widdop, Jess McLeod, Justin Long, Joel McHale, Katharine Isabelle, William B. Davis, Cassandra
Naud
It's a Wonderful Knife jumps on two current trends in the
horror genre. Firstly, it's another entry into the increasingly popular
sub-genre of horror movies set at Christmas. We seem to get more and
more of such movies each year as counter-programming to the obligatory
slew of festive rom-coms. It also follows
Happy Death Day,
Freaky
and
Totally Killer
in reworking a classic movie plot into a slasher movie. As its title not
so subtly suggests, director Tyler MacIntyre's film does for
It's a Wonderful Life what the aforementioned movies did
for Groundhog Day, Freaky Friday and
Back to the Future respectively.
If somehow you haven't seen It's a Wonderful Life: a) Why not? b) Go watch it, it's a classic for a reason c) Here's the
gist. Taking its cues from Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the film sees a
desperate man consider jumping off a bridge at Christmas, only for an
angel named Clarence to intervene and show him the hellscape his home
town of Bedford Falls would become in his absence.
Here, Bedford Falls becomes Angel Falls. Following the established
trend of this sub-genre, the protagonist is now a young blonde woman,
Winnie (Jane Widdop). On Christmas Eve death comes to Angel Falls
in the guise of a killer cloaked in an outfit cleverly modelled on a
Christmas tree angel. After claiming some victims, including Winnie's
best friend, the masked attacker is killed by Winnie. Unmasked, the
killer is revealed to be the town's sleazy mayor and unscrupulous
property developer Waters (Justin Long), who seemingly planned to
kill off a bunch of the town's teenagers so their parents would sell
their homes.
A year later we find Winnie suffering from depression. Nobody in the
town, including her own family, is willing to speak with her about the
traumatic events of the previous Christmas Eve. She's harassed by
Waters' brother. And she catches her boyfriend cheating with one of her
friends. Heading to the town bridge, Winnie verbally expresses her wish
that she had never been born.
All of these movies have to come up with some pseudo scientific reason
to explain their plots, and here we have a rare sighting of the Aurora
Borealis, which somehow grants Winnie her dark wish. Winnie finds that
Waters is still alive and is continuing to slaughter her town's
residents. Can she expose Waters and reset her reality?
MacIntyre is working with a lower budget on this indie production than
the previous studio-funded examples of this type of slasher, but he aims
to lasso the moon regardless. He takes advantage of his limited means by
giving his film the look of a seasonal Hallmark Christmas romance in its
opening scenes, bathing the town in the traditional red and green colour
scheme. Following Winnie's wish, the colour is drained to represent the
town's descent into terror. It's like going from the Adam West Batman to
Christian Bale Batman, and may well be a wry commentary on the drabness
of so many modern horror movies (MacIntyre's horror movies are always
distinctively awash with colour).
This is reflected in a script that wittily riffs on the sort of plots
that fuel the annual swathe of Christmas movies. Initially Winnie is
exactly the sort of sunny protagonist you find in such films, and Widdop
is very good in transitioning into the troubled young woman we later
encounter. Equally impressive is Jess McLeod as Bernie, a teenage
girl bullied by her peers who becomes Winnie's "Clarence" and helps her
take down Waters. It's a clever move on the part of screenwriter
Michael Kennedy (co-writer of Freaky) to have Winnie aided by the one person in town who is willing to
listen to her seemingly crazy claims simply because Bernie is so
desperate for any sort of human company. It's an affecting subplot and
McLeod plays the part in such a touching manner that you may find your
eyes watering a little, especially when the full mental toil of her
torment is revealed.
The movie certainly has heart, but some of you gorehounds will be
asking if it has guts? Yes, given its Hallmark movie influence it's
surprisingly bloody, and blood on snow is always a striking image.
Decking the killer out in a snow white outfit (like a reversal of
Scream's Ghostface) makes for some great shots of the angel costume covered
in its victim's blood. As the killer/mayor, Long is wonderfully
unlikable, channeling the spirit of a thousand fraudulent
televangelists. Between this and
Barbarian
he seems to have reinvented himself as the go to guy for characters you
instantly want to punch.
Mixing laughs with bloody set-pieces and some genuine pathos,
It's a Wonderful Knife is ideal viewing for that period
between Halloween and Christmas, which for horror fans is quickly
becoming the most wonderful time of the year.
It's a Wonderful Knife is on
Shudder UK/ROI from December 1st.
