You can never have too many Christmas slashers right?
When you hear the splice up of It’s A Wonderful Life, a slasher film and add in some time travel and you get Tyler MacIntyre’s It’s A Wonderful Knife.
MacIntyre was behind the vastly underseen satirical horror Tragedy Girls, and has now teamed up with Freaky writer Michael Kennedy to give us something fun, bloody and wildly entertaining.
In its bold opening we see the beginning of a killing spree by a killer dressed as an angel, but after some creative kills they are downed by Winnie Carruthers, and at this point you may be thinking ‘movie over’, but It’s A Wonderful Knife has plenty of surprises up its sleeve.
When Winnie wishes she has never been born she gets more than she wished for, and the nightmare begins again for her, only the previous massacre has been changed and now the killer is back for more carnage.
Jane Widdop’s Winnie is fantastic as our lead, but is level pegging with burgeoning genre icon Justin Long as the slimy, fake tanner-lathered Henry Waters, who bears a striking resemblance in many ways to a former US president.
What is refreshing about It’s A Wonderful Knife is how sincere it is with dealing with PTSD after the initial massacre, the scars are there for all to see on Winnie. It also deals with hard-hitting subjects such as suicide awareness, and how a simple acknowledgement can talk a person off the ledge. On the flipside the script is razor sharp and has subtle and more overt commentaries, such as the local cinema showing I Know What You Did Last Christmas in the alternate timeline.
There is also commentary around capitalist oppression, mainly through the side plot of Waters (Long), who wants to completely overrun the small town.
It’s A Wonderful Knife also plays with some tropes, including having a gay jock character plus the delightful Katharine Isabelle in another LGBT role as Winnie’s aunt. Joel McHale is quite surprising in a straight role as Winnie’s father, as many of us are used to seeing him in less serious roles such as in Community.
There is huge potential for It’s A Wonderful Knife to become a holiday horror mainstay, and hopefully we don’t have to wish upon a star to make that happen.
It’s A Wonderful Knife is released in US cinemas on 10 November 2023 and screened as part of Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2023.
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