"It's a Wonderful Knife" (2023)

by Joseph Perry and Mike Imboden

In our “The Good, the Bad, and the Verdict” film reviews, Joseph and Mike give their thoughts on a slice of cinema. For this installment, it’s RLJE Films and Shudder’s soon to be holiday classic, It’s a Wonderful Knife, directed by Tyler MacIntyre.

Synopsis

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 without her, things could be much, much worse.

The Good

Joseph: Jane Widdop carries It’s a Wonderful Knife, and that’s a heavier burden than Santa’s overstuffed bag of toys could ever be. She’s a delight to watch. The production values are fine.

Mike: With a cold-open that pretty much morphs into its own little self-contained movie, It’s a Wonderful Knife takes the well known plot device from It’s a Wonderful Life and rolls it up with a slasher movie plot, delivering a clever spin on both its inspirational namesake and the genre it’s playing with.

The very inclusive cast does a grand job of bringing their characters to knife life, with Jane Widdop making her “Winnie” a (mostly) likable central protagonist, and Joel McHale gets the opportunity to show that he’s capable of serious roles. And - fellow fans of The X-Files - William B. Davis (sans any Morley cigarettes), shows up as the grandfather of Widdop’s best friend.

MacIntyre does a good job of shooting things to keep them suspenseful only to crash in with a weapon through a body or the killer themself appearing from nowhere. The look of the killer - The Angel - is memorable with its white flowing robes and blank, white face, all of which presents a great juxtaposition of good and evil (and even more so when splattered with blood).

Michael Kennedy’s script - while not as good as Freaky - is solid, with plenty of earnest homages to the spiritual source material as well as slasher movies in general which, somehow, winds up being a pretty decent Christmas movie.

The Bad

Joseph: It’s a Wonderful Knife is one of the most unoriginal films in recent memory. It’s more than mere homage. It’s even more than mere pastiche. It simply takes the plot of Frank Capra’s beloved 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life — name checking characters from that movie for good measure — and gives it a slasher movie element in modern times. Even the most novice of horror fans are going to figure out the masked killer’s identity — I’m avoiding a spoiler here regarding the word “identity” — long before the reveal. And if the schmaltz isn’t thick enough for you, Justin Long’s performance is sub–scenery-chewing level. Most of the other performances aren’t much better, but when saddled with cliché characters such as the cheating boyfriend, the mean girl, the social outcast, the more popular sibling, and so on, granted, the cast members aren’t given much with which to work. It’s great to see Cassandra Naud but her supporting role is minimal at best — far better to spend your time watching her terrific star turn in the horror film Influencer than giving this film a try. Nonsensical plot points are in abundance. I could go on, but my opinion of this film should be pretty clear by now.

Mike: For as good as this could have been, a handful of annoying missteps preclude it from being a standout holiday horror mashup. Most are minor (intended quips that don’t land, some shots that seem a bit rushed), and don’t in and of themselves cause too much concern, but…

Let’s talk about Justin Long for a moment. While everyone else turns in a decent, serious effort, Long is far too hammy and over the top to be taken seriously. I get that he was going for a steroid-infused version of Mr. Potter, the robber-baron that George Bailey had to deal with in It’s a Wonderful Life, but come on, man.

Now, readers of GBV will know we try to avoid spoilers and this next comment may come perilously close to being one, but it’s a criticism I can’t ignore it, so consider yourself warned:

The biggest offense that this delivers is that it ignores its own rules (however tenuously they were presented), solely to provide an ending that is - quite arguably - the most predictable and weakest ending that Kennedy could have gone with. It’s almost like they said “Hey! We’ve subverted holiday movies, played with the genre a little, so let’s give everyone a… Hollywood ending!”

Seriously?

The Verdict

Joseph: Rather than spending 90 minutes on It’s a Wonderful Knife, give It’s a Wonderful Life another watch if you have seen it before, or a first-time watch if you haven’t. Take a chance on a different slasher film than this hackneyed effort, Christmas-themed or not. Regular readers of The Good, the Bad, and the Verdict know that I am rarely this negative about a movie, so take that into consideration. I’ll diplomatically finish off with “not recommended.”

Mike: It’s a Wonderful Knife takes the tried and true story conceit of It’s a Wonderful Life and drops it over a slasher film landscape which results in a mostly enjoyable experience. Well rounded characters, thanks to Jane Widdop and Joel McHale (to name a couple), give the viewer people to root for while Justin Long provides an easily hateable foil (although how much of that is the character and how much is Long’s ham-fisted and cheesy performance is debatable).

Is this worth a watch? Most certainly. The spin on the “never been born” plot is clever and as a slasher movie it’s quite well done and while this could - and most likely will - work as a decent enough Christmas movie (with added blood and violence), its place among other memorable “holiday horror” films is all but assured with its ending being the biggest potential sticking point for many viewers.