Movie Review: It’s a Wonderful Knife

Thanks to the relentless flood of Christmas movies unleashed upon the world every December by The Hallmark Channel, Lifetime, and others, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that there would be a growing subgenre of Christmas horror movies too. Blending such a joyous holiday with a macabre genre is hardly a new idea, with Bob Clark arguably launching the entire slasher genre with his thriller Black Christmas all the way back in 1974, but in recent years a growing number of filmmakers have decided to take a stab at creating their own. Writer Michael Kennedy, who previously wrote the body-swap slasher Freaky, here opts to turn the premise of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life into a serial killer feature. It’s not a terrible idea, though the end result is a little lackluster.

On Christmas Eve, Winnie (Jane Widdop) manages to stop a masked murderer before his body count can rise too high and discovers that he is actually powerful local businessman Henry Buck (Justin Long). The following year, she feels cut off from her friends and family due to the trauma of that night and wishes that she had never been born. Some cheesy aurora borealis effects occur and she finds herself living in a version of her hometown in which she has never existed and therefore Henry was allowed to keep on offing locals. The two cross paths and he is immediately suspicious of her, while she sets about trying to find someone to help her make her way back home.

The movie is well aware of its own cheesiness and smartly chooses to lean into the comedic aspects when possible, unfortunately, the jokes are only intermittently funny. Worse though is that the rushed pacing and director Tyler MacIntyre’s ho-hum style sap much of the movie of any horror. Many of the kills are surprisingly vicious but are so lacking in build-up that there is virtually no suspense until the finale. The cast are fine if largely unexceptional, though Long’s gleeful go at playing against type provides some campy fun. There is an unexpected sweetness to the story that makes it more endearing than it otherwise would be, and the scattered nods to other, less violent Christmas movies are a nice touch, but it too often feels (and looks) slapped together as quickly as most of the aforementioned Hallmark movies to be worth more than one watch. ★★