And a Do Over

I don’t want to say that we’ve reached “peak slasher mashup” just yet, in large part because both the slasher genre on its own, and mash up films for that genre, don’t make up a huge part of the theater growing experience at this point. We’re long past the heyday of the 1980s where it felt like every studio had to have their own ongoing slasher series, while every independent filmmaker was trying to crank out their own because, at the time, slashers were big business. It’s a rare thing at this point to get more than a couple of slashers a year in theaters, and most audiences have turned to other horror fare instead.

Mashups for the genre are even more infrequent, and rarely do they prove to be viable at the Box Office. While the timeloop slasher Happy Death Day was a surprise hit that scored big at the Box Office ($125.5 Mil on a $4.8 Mil budget), its sequel, Happy Death Day 2U barely managed to make half as much on twice the cost, and the creative team was unsure if a third film would ever happen. Meanwhile other mash-ups, like Freaky and Heart Eyes bombed during their respective runs. It seems like while there is still some appetite for slashers (the ongoing success of the ScreamWhat started as a meta-commentary on slasher media became just another slasher series in its own right, the Scream series then reinvented itself as a meta-commentary on meta-commentary. franchise proves that), audiences aren’t looking for a weird, mash-up take for their films.

Or maybe it’s just that audiences, with limited desire for slashers in general, don’t want to waste their time on ones that look bad. Especially when other mash-up films, like It’s a Wonderful Knife, have helped to sour viewers on the concept. Taking the general concept of It’s a Wonderful Life and slapping it onto the slasher genre seems like a concept that could work well enough. Slashers work best when they juxtapose humor and murder, creating a tension wire that pays off time and again. It’s possible to do the same with holiday cheer and murder, at least in theory, but It’s a Wonderful Knife doesn’t use the mash up of ideas well. It can never quite settle its tone, or figure out where it’s going, to create something fun to watch. It leaves the film feeling like it’s grasping while never finding what it’s reaching for.

The film opens with highschooler Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop) celebrating the holiday season with her family – her dad David (Joel McHale), her mom Judy (Erin Boyes), and her brother Jimmy (Aiden Howard), along with her aunt Gale Prescott (Katharine Isabelle). Her dad is called away by his boss, Henry Waters (Justin Long), to try to convince one of the town’s residents, Roger Evans (William B. Davis), to sell his home so a massive land deal can go through. Roger refuses, and is backed up by his granddaughter (and last heir), Cara (Hana Huggins). This would spell doom for the deal, except later that night Roger is killed by a masked murderer, and then, at a high school party that Winnie is also attending, the same masked murderer kills Cara right in front of her. He very nearly kills Jimmy as well, but Winnie saves him before they manage to electrocute the killer, revealing him to be Henry Waters.

A year later, things are going great for everyone except Winnie. David is now the CEO of Waters Industry, the family is thriving, and things are looking great for the new year. Winnie, though, is still grieving her lost friend and hasn’t been able to move on. Her outlook on life is so bad that, during the aurora borealis that night, she wishes that she had never been born. Suddenly the aurora disappears and then a masked killer, that same masked killer Winnie seemingly escaped a year before, comes for her. As she flees through town she learns that Henry is still alive, and is actually mayor now, and has been buying up every property he can. Somehow Winnie is now on a timeline where she never existed, and if she wants to set things right she’ll have to find a way to revert her wish and get back home.

It’s a Wonderful Knife is a movie with a solid premise that really can’t find the energy to get going. I like the idea of a person being key to stopping a crazed murderer than discovering that if they didn’t exist then the murderer they’d stopped would actually have continued their killing. On a very basic level that idea has merit. The problem for It’s a Wonderful Knife is that its execution on its story is lacking. It takes an intriguing idea and then squanders it on a bad setup and terrible execution.

For starters we never really get a good explanation for why Winnie is still so hung up, after a year, on the murders and why it’s holding her back. This problem stems from how little time the film devotes to the relationship between Winnie and Cara. We get that they’re best friends, but it’s not a lived in relationship that makes us feel like Winnie would still be struggling with it a year later. If she and Cara had been romantically involved that might be different, but Winnie is actually dating a jock, and she seems less hung up on the fact that the jock is cheating on her than she is that her friend is dead. Some balance here on her motivations needed to be worked on. We either needed more time with her and Cara, or a different angle on their relationship, or something.

Skipping the film a year ahead doesn’t help matters either. I understand that for the premise to work there needs to be some time elapsed so that people can move on but Winnie can be stuck on what happened. But it could be a month, instead of a year, and that would make things more logical. Her family could have moved on, since humans are good at that, but Winnie could still be grieving after a month and we’d understand why. A year feels like too long a period for Winnie to still not be over it, unable to go to college or find any motivation because her friend is dead. Something here needed to be adjusted so we could understand Winnie better in context.

The film also spends a lot of time in its second act setting up this new normal world, one without Winnie, without also giving us more kills. The masked killer does get a couple of decent kills in, but they’re few and far between, not really carrying the momentum needed for the film. It doesn’t help that we’re on a new timeline and the film has no way to establish if people that die here stay dead if Winnie ever gets back home. That means that what kills we do get are infrequent and they also feel like they don’t matter. Who cares if some random dude at a party gets sliced up when he might just be alive again when Winnie finds a way to return him. Because of course she finds a way to return home. This is a mash-up with It’s a Wonderful Life. There’s no other way for this to play out.

Most egregious, though, is the last act when everything seemingly gets resolved. Here the film adds on one twist after another, without them seemingly making no sense. Then, without spoiling anything, the film introduces another form of magic (beyond the “wish upon an aurora” that sets the film in motion) without any explanation of reason for how it works, just to give the heroine a chance to “resolve” everything on this timeline before going on. It’s just a mess.

The core idea of It’s a Wonderful Knife isn’t bad, but it really feels like the filmmakers came at this from, “this is a funny name, can we make a movie out of it,” instead of, “this is a good story, or and here’s a funny name we can add on as the cherry on top.” A good name can’t make up for a threadbare idea with bad execution. Mash-up slashers can work, but It’s a Wonderful Knife doesn’t work at all. It shows that not every mash-up slasher idea really will make for a good film.