It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023)
Director: Tyler MacIntyre
Screenwriter: Michael Kennedy
Starring: Jane Widdop, Joel McHale, Justin Long, Jess McLeod, Katherine Isabelle, Cassandra Naud

One has to wonder if a review for a film titled It’s A Wonderful Knife needs any introduction, but one must be written regardless. If you think it might have some twist to what the title would suggest, please allay those fears: it’s exactly what you think it is. Knife is a slasher take on It’s A Wonderful Life, the 1946 Frank Capra film starring Jimmy Stewart, a man who wishes his life never existed and through visiting an alternate timeline at Christmas, comes to appreciate what he had. Here we have a play on the same thing, with Jimmy Stewart being replaced by Jane Widdop’s Winnie, who stopped the Angel Falls masked killer one year before, and when ending up in a timeline where she never existed, finds the killer still on the loose, now with over 25 kills under his belt. If Winnie doesn’t stop the killer before the end of the night, she’ll never get back to her home world.

When you realise that Michael Kennedy also wrote the screenplay to Christopher Landon’s 2020 slasher film Freaky, a slasher sendup of classic Lindsay Lohan/Jamie Lee Curtis film Freaky Friday, you know what you’re in for. It’s a film that isn’t afraid to lean into the film it’s stealing its storyline from. It’s going to be pretty campy, silly in parts following teen outsiders coming together in the strangest of circumstances, with a decent production budget, and everyone knows what they’re doing. There’s never an attempt to be anything it isn’t and there are a few people who overdo the acting for the sheer joy and fun of it. Case in point, horror veteran Justin Long as the smarmy corporate businessman Henry Waters, doing his best capitalist megalomaniac impression. It’s overdone to a Matthew Lillard Thirteen Ghosts level, but so good for it. As the kids would say, he understood the assignment.

The cinematography from Nicholas Piatnik is great, full of christmas lights managing to set off the darkness well. It’s a film of contrasts, of light and dark, of neon greed shining out in a world that has forgotten hope and faith. In a film like this which is, despite the bloody slayings, warm and cosy, the atmosphere is perfectly captured. Of course, congratulations also go to the art direction by Louisa Birkin, and set dressing by Matt Carson and Jan Sikora for helping Piatnik get the lighting right with the practicals. It’s a wonderfully cohesive film in terms of its visual aesthetic, and when the blood hits the snow and the white costume of the killer, the blood is dark and visceral, which only works in contrast to the vibrant lighting. It’s a gorgeous looking film.

It’s a Wonderful Knife also isn’t afraid to go the whole way with its anti-capitalist statement. Its whole sentiment is that greed and complicit non-action in the thuggish, brutal ways to establish corporate dominance is not only manifest in physical actions, but is a kind of mental virus, capable of taking over the minds of those watching. It preys on grief. It preys on when we are at our lowest. Even those vehemently opposed to megalomaniacal corporations taking advantage of the lower classes still order from Amazon on occasion. In this way, Knife manages to take criticism of capitalist greed further than other films which might otherwise just have a statement of ‘capitalism bad’ as their fundamental premise.

But despite all this praise, there are parts that aren’t fantastic on a technical front. A few moments are very on-the-nose with their dialogue, expositionally overdoing the points we already know. The first kill is badly done, seeming like it’s cut to hide any effects work that they apparently haven’t done. Either that or it’s just badly cut. And even though Justin Long is perfectly embodying the smarmy businessman, one could say it’s overdone even past the point of campiness; overdoing an overdone performance. It’s how you take it.

So it isn’t perfect. Perhaps the messages are heavy handed, as subtle as a candy cane to the throat. But who cares? It’s not the greatest film in the world, but the main cast is great, the visuals are very Hallmark, and it’s got a cute ending. So on a cold night, if you’re fed up with the regular Christmas films, this 90 minute blast might just hit the spot for some holiday horror hooliganism.

Score: 16/24

Freaky (2021)
Director: Christopher Landon
Screenwriter: Michael Kennedy, Christopher Landon
Starring: Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Katie Finneran, Celeste O’Connor, Misha Osherovich, Alan Ruck

Following years of writing and directing to very little fanfare, Christopher Landon finally found a shtick that works when he directed the successful Blumhouse horror-comedy Happy Death Day. Since the success of Happy Death Day, Landon has, in his own words, stuck to films of “the same DNA”, directing a sequel to his 2017 hit and following it up with 2021’s Freaky. The bare bones of both Happy Death Day and Freaky are essentially the same, with both stories telling of a young (coincidentally blonde) female student, and each revolving around a 24 hour time frame. Although Happy Death Day follows Tree Gelbman having to live the same day over and over again, Freaky follows Millie Kessler who has 24 hours to reverse a body swap between herself and the Blissfield Butcher, a murdering psychopath. 

Freaky opens in a way that not many slashers do nowadays: with a Craven-esque first kill (or more appropriately, kills). The Blissfield Butcher first strikes by taking out four high school students partying away in the most cliched fashion: telling spooky stories, having sex, drinking alcohol and so on. Though many would read “cliché” negatively, it is the very cliched nature of the first scene that truly sets up what to expect from the entire film: that it’s all just a bit of fun, a movie made to be enjoyed and not to be taken too seriously. 

Much like Happy Death Day, the emotional hook attached to Freaky is in Millie’s home life and particularly her progression as a character. Having been bullied for much of her life, Millie is a shy, introverted teen just trying to make it through high school, all the while her home life has been unpleasant ever since her father died. Though these emotional hooks do create some investment in the characters, it is clear that their involvement within the film is merely to give the story even the tiniest slither of meaning behind the blood and guts. 

Whilst the emotional crux of the movie may be paper thin, that is not to say that the material is bad overall. Freaky can be predictable at points – character progressions and story arcs can be seen from miles away – but the characters themselves are written very well. Each is injected with tonnes of charisma, which is then further emphasised by the quality of performances. Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton put in particularly fantastic turns. Arguably, Freaky simply would not work anywhere near as well as it does with anyone else leading the way. 

Structurally, Freaky is great, never dragging for a second and keeping up a good pace; it absolutely flies by. The script is not perfect though. The humour throughout the film can feel a little lazy at points, especially with Vaughn having to act in an overly “feminine” way whilst Millie is in his body, but alongside this there are some genuine laugh out loud moments, and the humour, whether it hits or misses, does create a light tone over the movie which allows for plenty of fun to be had. 

Whereas the comedy side of Freaky’s horror-comedy combination doesn’t always land, the horror side of things consistently holds up. Very much a tribute to slasher flicks of the 80s, Freaky is jam-packed with fantastic gory practical effects, and some truly inventive and gruesome kills that will have you squirming in your seat. There aren’t many scares by modern standards, but there are some good ones in there and Landon does take his time to build moments of palpable tension.

As for Landon’s role as the screenwriter, director and thus the creative leader of Freaky, it is clear that with each new entry into his little family of slasher pictures he is improving across the board. His talent, and therefore the quality of his movies, is evidently progressing with each production. His vision is clear and seemingly executed exactly as planned. Underneath his own progression there is also a slight feeling that there may be more beneath the surface, both in his plans for these movies and in his talent as a director. Multiple parallels between the Happy Death Day films and Freaky seem to portray that something special is very subtly being created in the background of Landon’s worlds, with similarities in characters, cinematography, costume and world building. Indeed, Landon himself has already teased that Mille Kessler and Tree Gelbman “will bump into each other someday”.

Landon’s shtick is still working. It is an undeniably successful formula that the filmmaker has created with his past three projects, and through close examination it also seems that it is only the beginning of something very exciting. Freaky, much like the Happy Death Day features, may not be the most perfect film of all time, but it is insanely fun. It creates a world and characters that we simply do not want to leave by the time the credits begin to roll. 

16/24