It's A Wonderful Knife

Making a Christmas film is a lot like making a Christmas record. Most of what’s out there is terrible, so if you can do a half decent job, you can guarantee repeat sales every year, indefinitely. The definition of a Christmas film has expanded considerably over the past decade as more and more funders have come to understand that there is a public appetite for options other than Hallmark-style cutesy family dramas. As Christmas horror comedies have themselves become a staple, however, they have undergone a similar drop in quality. Flimsy plots based on flimsier puns don’t become significantly more interesting in the presence of gore. It’s A Wonderful Knife has two ideas, one of them borrowed, and nothing to follow them up with.

It begins with a hefty prologue. This is Angel Falls, where local business mogul Henry Waters (Justin Long) has plans for a new development but is frustrated by one elderly man who wants to pass on his beloved home to his children and grandchildren. On Christmas Eve, Mr Evans meets with a nasty fate, and that’s just part of a rampage which builds up quite a body count before gutsy blond teenager Winnie (Jane Widdop) succeeds in fighting back and unmasking the unsurprising culprit. It’s a serviceable slasher short and if the film had stopped there it might have won a fair few fans, providing due relief from seasonal schmaltz. Unfortunately there’s over an hour left to go.

We pick up a year later when most people in the town have moved on and Winnie’s family is sick of her moping. They’re not exactly smart about cheering her up: on Christmas morning she receives a pink tracksuit whilst her brother receives a truck. Things go from bad to worse as that night she makes an unfortunate discovery about her boyfriend. Soon she’s standing outside, all alone, under the aurora, and we move into full on It’s A Wonderful Life mode as she wishes she had never been born.

The problem is, of course, that when Winnie’s wish comes true she’s not only a stranger to everyone she knew, but she’s living in a world where no-one stopped the killer.

There might have been some mileage in this, but the remainder of the film is woefully underdeveloped. The generic slasher plot offers no interesting twists or creative kills. Most of the characters have no discernible personality so there’s no reason to care what happens to them, and there isn’t even wit to make up for it. If anything gives you a real scare, it’s likely to be the dialogue.

Widdop works hard with what she’s given and makes Winnie, at least, feel like a real person. There’s also a decent turn by Jess McLeod as the local outcast with whom she forms a bond, though having that character dubbed ‘Weirdo’ by the popular kids gives the impression of an unfinished script still padded out with placeholders. Their efforts are undermined by a twee ending which takes us straight back into Hallmark territory. If all you want is a bit of festive fluff, it may serve its purpose, but overall it’s a disappointment.