Just as you were waiting for a great holiday slasher to arrive, two came along all at once! In this fine vintage of a horror year, we have seen Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving carve up the competition on the big screen. And now, it’s Christmas time, and whereas last year gave us Violent Night to enjoy, we might just have found 2023’s alternative Christmas cracker in Tyler MacIntyre’s high-concept slasher It’s A Wonderful Knife.
In an inspired move, this film essentially takes the concept of Frank Capra’s iconic 1946 classic It’s A Wonderful Life and gives it a horror spin as the town of Angel Falls gears up to celebrate the holidays when a man in a white mask and robe attacks, killing two people. Young Winnie (Jane Widdop) manages to kill and unmask the assailant but loses her best friend in the process. One year later, the town and her family seem all too happy to forget about the bloodshed, while Winnie’s life seems to be slowly falling apart, and she thinks she’d be better not having been born at all. And, well, you may know the rest here: Winnie heads back to town after making that wish, only to find she has never existed, and therein wasn’t there to ever stop “The Angel” killer at all or his now ever-mounting body count in the year that followed.
It’s A Wonderful Knife has great fun with its premise, which goes beyond a fun pun and actually instils the proceedings with a fair few weighty themes and ideas. Michael Kennedy’s generous screenplay is filled with some gruesome moments and some rather sweet and sour ones, from Capra’s meaning of life musings to the power of governing by fear and the life-saving power of finding that kinship you never saw coming. The final act may get a bit heavy with some of the fantastical leanings, but this is never less than a fun film, very much in the same vein as Freaky and Happy Death Day in how it wields its premise.
Like the aforementioned, it benefits greatly from some great and enjoyable performances. Widdop is excellent as the young woman who discovers the right path in life by witnessing what the world – and her town – is like without her. Meanwhile there are terrific supporting turns from Jess McLeod as the reclusive but very kind-hearted Bernie, genre fave Katherine Isabelle gives us one of the greatest movie auntie’s ever, and Justin Long turns up the full creep-out factor as the disingenuous mayor Henry Waters!
Not everything works, and there is the odd twist you may see coming, but It’s A Wonderful Knife is blessed with a script that has plenty of ideas that are so well delivered, and a very genuine – and inclusive – heart, with a roster of strong actors and characters, and some brilliantly shot set pieces (see the lights-out cinematorium sequence) and a very memorable slasher baddie design in the all-white dagger wielding Angel.
Every time a bell rings, an angel…guts a resident! Atta boy Clarence!
It’s A Wonderful Knife is playing now on Shudder.
