After saving her town from a psychotic killer, Winnie Carruthers' life is less than wonderful. When she wishes she'd never been born, she finds herself in a nightmare parallel universe where withou...
You guys know I don’t care how early it is: ‘It’s a Wonderful Knife’ pulled on my stuffings and got me in the mood for a little bit of jolly and Christmas beatings. Not to mention, the premise was actually intriguing.
Let’s say this fulfilled only the former half of that phrase and almost nothing else.
While not uncomfortable, the best way to describe Tyler MacIntyre’s approach on directing is cheeky; apparently, the style he wrote for Five Nights At Freddy’s is the same way he directs too: stiff and un-agile. As a slasher lives and dies by its fundamentals, his attempt to grasp suspense in this feature is rendered null and void.
For the most part, technically, the film looked fine. Both the cinematography and editing are basic in its execution and visuals, even if the occasional establishing shots of the city get employed to an overindulgent degree, and the color grading renders some scenes drab and unamusing to look at. I found the costumes to be decent, Russ Howard III’s musical score is unmemorable, pacing is passable but probably would’ve benefited everything else by being a few minutes longer and I swear this is the first time the production design for a movie deliberately tries to be Hallmark-esque for sake of the atmosphere. It never looks cheap, thankfully, and something about the mere redressing of sets once the plot actually kicks in is unintentionally charming.
That ambition definitely exceeds the budget here but it’s still something to appreciate.
Also, even if the characters aren’t your cup of tea, and they’re definitely not mine, props to the performers for fulfilling their roles and trying to supply them with some kind of depth and dimension; Jane Widdop, Jess McLeod and Justin Long carry this show from beginning to end.
So this here is essentially ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ meets ‘Scream 2’ meets ‘Freaky’; yet another high concept genre mashup like Totally Killer…..and another collaboration that falters on the potential, although not for lack of trying. It paints itself under a fascinating portrait: a potential look at the long-lasting trauma behind being a “final girl” and the burden that implies while discovering their self-worth and why you still matter to some people. Theoretically, it’s messages are the same as “It’s a Wonderful Life” and it does apply to what I just said…..but it’s all painfully surface level, especially when it throws around ideas about corporate greed and small-town gentrification to middling returns. Sure, those underbaked ideas are shown to have some traction thanks to some self-aware wit and they occasionally have their set-ups and payoffs. But those gets bogged down by an impulsive plot with tedious exposition, blunt-force dialogue that feels the need to over-explain everything and a staggering lack of tonal control or logic; it’s all over the place with this film.
To be fair, Totally Killer has that exact same problem: sloppily shifting rules for its time-travel mythology and muddled life lessons for its protagonist. But to give Totally Killer some credit, at least its tone is mostly consistent; it knows what it wants to be. The implausible roadblocks and occasionally character misbehaviors presented in this film make sense at face-value but when dissected further, it’s only made damningly telling of a production seemingly unable to develop plot lines, and instead just adds them to fill some time.
Unfortunately, it’s also made very clear its horror elements come second-rate here. It fulfills its R-rating with blinding colors and the kills are decent enough but it completely bungles its scares and again, that balance between rosy-cheeked sentimentality and sharpened violence is HEAVILY lopsided. It’s so confusing how this movie was essentially sold as a slasher twist on a beloved Golden Age Hollywood film and is BEGRUDGINGLY disinterested in actually going anywhere with that intriguing premise.
I’m still convinced that this could’ve worked as both a straightforward slasher comedy with the coming-of-age holiday romance bundled underneath but it just needed more time to cohesively bring all of those elements together or at least, find more confidence in what kind of movie they wanted to make. That being said, I can’t bring myself to fully detest this.
