Nearly 50 years after Bob Clark decided to set one of the very first slasher films during the holiday season with 1974’s Black Christmas, Tyler MacIntyre’s It’s a Wonderful Knife slices its way into theaters with even bigger aspirations, riffing on the Frank Capra classic from which it derives its name. Also harkening back to Wes Craven’s Scream — especially in the stylish costume design of its cloaked “Angel” killer — this latest slasher flick makes an effort to imbue its bloody mayhem with humor with the likes of Joel McHale and Justin Long among its cast. A healthy dose of holiday schmaltz sweetens the sinister trappings, and all the ingredients are here for some killer Christmas-horror comedy, which makes it all the more off-putting when we end up with such a tonally uneven lump of coal.
On Christmas Eve, when her sleepy town of Angel Falls is besieged by a mysterious killer clad in all white, high schooler Winnie (Jane Widdop) electrocutes him and unmasks Henry Waters (Long), the smarmy real estate mogul who has just murdered the one man standing in his way of building his own version of Trump Tower. After strategically targeting others obstructing his goals, Henry’s spree as the killer is short-lived, and a year later everyone has moved on. Everyone, it seems, except Winnie. She’s still traumatized by the murder of her best friend, Cara (Hana Huggins) and near-murder of her brother, Jimmy (Aiden Howard), exactly one year prior. But Winnie’s mom (Erin Boyes) and dad (McHale) want her to move on with her life already—it’s Christmas, after all!
Feeling unhappy and misunderstood (and discovering her boyfriend is cheating on her!), Winnie wishes under a sky streaked with northern lights that she’d never been born. Cue the overt George Bailey similarities so on-the-nose that even the characters themselves point them out at every turn. Winnie’s “Clarence” is a social pariah named Bernie (Jess McLeod), a quirky, ostracized girl everyone refers to as “Weirdo.” Thrust into this alternate universe where she never existed, Winnie discovers her brother is dead after all because she wasn’t there to save him. Her mom is now a pathetic drunk with a sidepiece. Her grief-stricken dad is a shell of himself. The killer continues to run rampant and has taken out around 26 other folks during his yearlong reign of terror. Meanwhile, Henry Waters is now mayor and controls the town like some mesmerizing dictator.
While Long turns in a gleeful scene-chewing performance as the film’s baddie (those prosthetic chompers do a lot of heavy lifting) and McHale is convincing as a father grieving the loss of his son, Widdop often feels as though she’s playing it too straight in the lead role, especially when the material seems to call for a dash more untethered verve or camp. Moreover, the film as a whole never really settles on a tone that works. With a dearth of scares and only a faint smattering of laughs, we’re mainly just left with the holiday schmaltz, which Michael Kennedy’s script lays on thick, especially in the burgeoning connection between Winnie and Bernie. If you’re going to take on classic source material and add this kind of twist, you’d better have something new and interesting to say. Unfortunately for It’s a Wonderful Knife, this slasher-themed holiday trifle aims for the heart but misses its mark.
Photo courtesy of RLJE Films/Shudder
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