With this year’s Halloween now in the past and with Christmas right around the corner, many genre fans will likely take to the limbo that is November to watch their favorite holiday-themed horror movies. Festive horror is a notorious subgenre, with last year’s runaway success Violent Night scratching this itch for many—to say nothing of classics like 1974’s Black Christmas. It’s A Wonderful Knife sports an equally clever parody title, but has little else going for it, coasting on the premise of Frank Capra’s classic and failing to stand out among its predecessors.
Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop) seems to have it all: A progressive, upper-middle-class family, a large circle of friends and a promising future, seemingly on-track to getting accepted into NYU. That is, until a masked killer murders her best friend Cara (Hana Huggins) at a Christmas Eve party. Although she’s able to catch the killer and reveal his identity as the town’s predatory home developer Henry Waters (Justin Long doing a Martin Short impression), she spends the next year blaming herself for Cara’s death. Staring into the aurora borealis one night (yes, you read that right), she finds herself wishing she was never born, only to get her wish granted by the celestial display. Now a stranger in her hometown, Winnie must pair up with local outcast Bernie (Jess McLeod), to stop Waters all over again.
If that already sounds like a whole movie’s worth of a first act, it’s made worse by director Tyler MacIntyre and screenwriter Michael Kennedy’s failure to properly pace It’s A Wonderful Knife, situating the inciting incident about a half-hour into the 90-minute endeavor. The film sloshes through a sea of familiar story beats, none developed enough to add depth to these characters or the decisions they make. When Winnie discovers that her boyfriend Robbie (Jason Fernandez, barely on-screen) has been cheating, it’s meant to be the icing on the cake after a terrible year. However, this only comes as a shock to us because it wasn’t clear that they were a couple in the first place, having previously only shared one scene together. The friendship between Cara and Winnie is also underdeveloped, with the script making little reference to the former after she dies, resulting in a missed opportunity to garner sentimentality.
Amid a postmodern slasher revival that has offered us the likes of Happy Death Day, the Fear Street trilogy and, most recently, Totally Killer, It’s a Wonderful Knife fails to stand out amidst the witty humor and incisive allegories of its subgenre. Most egregious is its attempt to grapple with contemporary concerns, like venture capitalism and social conformity, with little ideological bearing of its own. Not unlike 2019’s unfortunate Black Christmas remake (which hilariously undercut its own generic critique of sexism by blaming college rape culture on a séance conducted by an evil professor), the sci-fi element of MacIntyre’s film detracts from whatever points it attempts to make about conformity under capitalism: A weird mind control allegory sees Waters using the aurora borealis(!) to perform a spell on the town’s populace in the third act.
In the film’s favor, though, is its admittedly refreshing inclusion of queer characters. It’s no longer revolutionary, but the casual depiction of so many same-sex couples in a movie which doesn’t explicitly revolve around LGBTQ+ subject matter is admirable. To that point, Widdop and MacLeod’s chemistry is quite sweet, even if the former’s uneven performance leaves some things to be desired. To be fair, it had to have been difficult for Widdop to make do with the material they were given as lead (an early tell-don’t-show moment where they’re tasked with didactically narrating inner conflicts out loud comes to mind). Meanwhile, Long seems to be having the time of his life in this villainous role, complete with an orange tan and prosthetic teeth, and is truly a joy to watch. The uncanniness provided by his affected performance is easily the scariest thing in this disappointingly tame horror endeavor—especially considering the flat, Hallmark-grade cinematography that fails to provide any atmosphere at all.
Coming at a time when slashers are back in vogue, It’s a Wonderful Knife arrives as an early lump of coal in your Christmas stocking. Lacking both style and substance, even its cute central romance and the inclusion of a beloved genre actor can’t save it. Perhaps “It’s a Dreadful Knife” would have made a better title.
Director: Tyler MacIntyre
Writer: Michael Kennedy
Starring: Jane Widdop, Joel McHale, Katharine Isabelle, Justin Long
Release Date: November 10, 2023
Ursula Muñoz S. is a critic, journalist and MFA candidate at Boston University who has previously written for news and entertainment outlets in Canada and the United States. Her work has appeared at Xtra, Cineaste, Bright Wall/Dark Room and more. For further reading, feel free to follow her on Substack and X, where she muses about Taylor Swift and Pedro Almodóvar (among other things).