Hallmark Horror

This You Call a Wonderful Knife?! (Spoilers)

I went to see a Christmas movie in November. I’m kind of ashamed of myself for that, because I firmly believe the Christmas season doesn’t start until the day after Thanksgiving. I had to do it, however. The movie was called It’s A Wonderful Knife, a play on my favorite Christmas movie of all time. As a bonus, it was directed by Tyler MacIntyre, who directed and co-wrote Tragedy Girls, and written by Michael Kennedy, who co-wrote the script for Freaky.

The Plot Synopsis

One Christmas Eve, Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop) saves her town of Angel Falls from a masked killer wearing one of the best slaher movie costumes in a long time. However, a year later, Winnie isn’t doing so great and she wishes that she was never born. Winnie’s wish gets granted and she winds up in an alternate universe where the killer roams free.

As Winnie found out a year ago, the Angel Killer is town mayor Henry Waters (Justin Long), this real estate, “spray tanned t**t” who’s modern day equivalent of Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore). So, in addition to killing a bunch of civilians, he’s also turned Angel Falls into a gentrified s******e. The makers of this movie should have given Long more to do because as he is, Mr. Waters is indistpinquiable from the millions of other Trump caricatures out there. 

Winnie only manages to convince two people that she is, in fact, from another universe. One is Bernie Simon (Jess McLeod), who everyone calls Weirdo for reasons that aren’t explained. Winnie seems to be the only person willing to be nice to Bernie and even she still bowed to peer pressure and avoided talking to Bernie at the beginning of the movie.

The other person who Winnie convinces is her cool aunt Gale Prescott (Katharine Isabelle), whose name is an obvious tip to the hat towards Scream. Winnie’s appearance, a blonde bob cut and sweater, probably is as well, since she’s dressed almost exactly like Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore). As pointed out by Kennedy, Winnie also looks like Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton) in Re-Animator, but that’s probably just a coincidence.

The Good and Bad

One of the things that has Winnie so down at the beginning of the movie is that her best friend gets murdered, she has to kill someone in self-defense, and her parents just want her to move on without ever talking about what happened because “that was a year ago.” However, this mental health struggle subplot that gets set up is brushed to the side with all the alternate universe action and isn’t really addressed again until the very end of the movie.

After getting her life back, Winnie wakes up on Christmas to her parents telling her that they were wrong not to let her talk about what happened, even though there’s no narrative reason for them to say that other than it’s time for the happy ending. The moment also falls flat because Winnie barely interacts with her parents in this movie. The longest conversation she has with her dad is about her brother, who died in the other timeline.

Most of Winnie’s screen time, when she’s not final girling, is spent developing her relationship with Bernie. It’s the emotional core of the movie and watching the two of them move from barely knowing each other to being friends to being something more was really sweet. And unlike what some people are saying, the queer relationships in this film don’t feel forced or like the filmmakers were just checking boxes. It all felt natural.

My Final Thoughts

A couple moments in this movie could have been longer, like Winnie not appreciating her life. One of the best parts of It’s A Wonderful Life is the slow burn of the main character’s frustrations and sorrow mounting over about an hour and a forty minutes. Of course, I suppose here you can’t do that because you have to get to the slasher. Plus, Winnie’s a teenager, a time when you feel things a lot more strongly, so it’s not that much of a stretch.

It’s A Wonderful Knife is not as good as Freaky or Tragedy Girls. The horror, comedy, and drama doesn’t gel as well as it did in those movies. However, it is a cute movie that’s held together by strong performances, especially from Widdop and McLeod. It’s also enough to get you into the holiday spirit, so I would recommend watching this around Christmas time.