It’s A Wonderful Knife is an extremely fun, holiday themed, slasher flick that delivers on both bloody kills and holiday spirit.
Everyone loves a good Christmas movie to put them in the holiday spirit — but when you take that and make it a slasher flick, life really couldn’t get much better. That is exactly what It’s A Wonderful Knife does. It’s extremely entertaining, packed with bloody kills, and also somehow includes quite a bit of holiday spirit.
We all know the story of It’s A Wonderful Life, where a man thinks about ending it all on Christmas, but is shown all the good that he has done in his life and learns how worse off his town and family would be without him.
That is more or less the theme of this film, when a year after the town was plagued by brutal murders, the girl who put a stop to them by killing the killer wishes that she was never born. When Winnie gets her wish, she realizes that without her no one would have been there to stop the murderous Angel, and the town would have been much worse off.
Dealing with the fact that her own parents don’t recognize her, and that she was never there to save her brother’s life, throw her into a spiral before she becomes determined to set things right — she does know who the killer is after all, right?
The Angel dons an outfit similar to Ghostface in Scream, and we can see this becoming a hot Halloween costume as well. Thanks to being all white, the bright red blood really shows, which takes the kills to a whole new level. The killer is creepy, too, largely because of the smooth all white mask that is truly unsettling.
The fact that It’s A Wonderful Life features an angel as well, Clarence, who has a much different role in the film creates for some truly fun parallels. Winnie does get her own version of an angel, however, in the town weirdo Bernie.
No one has ever really paid attention to her, so what does she have to lose in helping out the new to town girl that no one believes? Winnie has her own way of saving Bernie, too, which is very touching and fits the story perfectly.
This movie wastes absolutely no time getting into the murders, which is part of what makes it so fun. While it was expected that with the short runtime, and the fact that we know there is going to be a wish after the first round of murders that sets the story in motion, the pacing is propelled forward (in a good way) when the first kill occurs less than ten minutes after hitting play.
The cast is incredible, in particular Joel McHale and Justin Long. Both actors have always shown how great they are as they often standout as the most charismatic in their movies, but they never fight for the attention in this one. They have their own roles to play and both do exceptionally well. Of course, Jane Widdop and Jess McLeod deliver a lot of the unexpected heart.
It’s A Wonderful Knife somehow combines horrific murders, twisted surprises, unexpected connections, and the holiday spirit into an unforgettable film that is going to make a lot of slasher fans happy.
This movie is, quite simply, a grand old time. The runtime of less than ninety minutes allows it to fly by and never dull. While most of it is predictable, that doesn’t make it any less entertaining or fun.
Rating: 3 out of 5
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About It’s A Wonderful Knife
A year after saving her town from a psychotic killer on Christmas Eve, Winnie Carruthers’ life is less than wonderful — but when she wishes she’d never been born, she finds herself in a nightmare parallel universe and discovers that without her, things could be much, much worse. Now the killer is back, and she must team up with the town misfit to identify the killer and get back to her own reality.
Directed by Tyler MacIntyre (Tragedy Girls, V/H/S/99) and Written by Michael Kennedy (Freaky), IT’S A WONDERFUL KNIFE stars Cassandra Naud (Influencer), Justin Long (Live Free or Die Hard, Christmas with the Campbells), Joel McHale (“Community”,The Happytime Murders), and Jane Widdop (Jessica Darling’s It List, Lost Girls: Angie’s Story).
It’s A Wonderful Knife: Only In Theaters on November 10, 2023.
Tessa Smith is a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer-approved Film and TV Critic. She is also a Freelance Writer. Tessa has been in the Entertainment writing business for ten years and is a member of several Critics Associations including the Critics Choice Association and the Greater Western New York Film Critics Association.