INTERVIEW: Spread yuletide scares with ‘It’s a Wonderful Knife’
Photo: It’s a Wonderful Knife stars, from left, Aiden Howard, Joel McHale and Erin Boyes. Photo courtesy of RLJE Films and Shudder / Provided by KWPR with permission.
Christmastime, which is somehow already here, has always featured horror-filled scarefests at the local movie theater. Think back to some of the genre’s staples: Silent Night, Deadly Night; Black Christmas; last year’s The Mean One. Even director Eli Roth is getting in on the action with a Thanksgiving-themed feature, appropriately called Thanksgiving.
The yuletide slashing begins in earnest this weekend at the box office with the release of It’s a Wonderful Knife, written by Freaky’s Michael Kennedy and directed by Tragedy Girls’ Tyler MacIntyre. Starring Justin Long, Joel McHale, Jane Widdop, Katharine Isabelle, Jess McLeod and Cassandra Naud, the movie is a riff on the classic Frank Capra film It’s a Wonderful Life. In this updated version, the character of Winnie (Widdop) wishes she was never born, mostly because she’s still dealing with the trauma of a horrible, murderous killing spree that took place during last year’s Christmas season. Well, she gets what she asks for and is offered the chance to see what the world would be like without her being in it. The alternate reality that Winnie sees is quite scary.
It’s a Wonderful Knife, from RLJE Films and Shudder, is now playing in theaters, but the movie will be released on Shudder and AMC+ at a later date.
“I was at a point where I was ready to start a new project, and I knew I wanted to do a Christmas slasher,” Kennedy said in a recent Zoom interview. “And then I started thinking about what that could be, and then I was reminiscing about my time on Freaky and the set and the experience of that and how wonderful it was. I said, ‘I kind of want to do that again,’ so I said, ‘OK, let’s try to do a mashup of Christmas.’ And I immediately thought of It’s a Wonderful Life. Yeah, that’s it, love that movie, my dad’s favorite movie. Even if people have never seen the movie or think they don’t know the movie, they know the movie. I really love playing in the space of familiarity in horror and then taking that familiarity and using it against the audience. So, yeah, that’s the genesis, and finding the story was next. Once I found the story, I was ready to run with the concept.”
MacIntyre read Kennedy’s script and immediately loved it. As a director, he appreciates high-concept horror, and he couldn’t believe this type of satire had never been done before.
“I tend to write some of my own stuff that I direct,” MacIntyre said. “When I’m looking to direct something that I am not writing, I always look for a hook like that, but also for it to be unlike something that I would write myself. This was kind of perfect in that it had this very positive message to it, and a lot of the stuff that I write is a little bit more cynical. But at the same time, it would allow me to use some of the tools that I was familiar with and sort of bring something to the table.”
Kennedy said his script changed a few times after Long, McHale, Widdop and the rest of the cast were brought into the project. He wanted a collaboration with the actors, and this meant changing a few lines and character traits in order to match the roles to the performers.
“You get somebody cast, and you just see their look even can sometimes change a beat,” Kennedy said. “I definitely was doing polishes on this script after casting sessions when a piece of the puzzle would come together. Sean Depner, who plays Buck, is a great example. When we cast him, the character was 20, and we quickly realized we love him for this role. But it’s either we can’t cast him to keep the character 20, or we cast him and we rewrite the character to kind of fit his look and demeanor. And we chose the latter because we loved him so much, and then that informed the character of Henry Waters [Long] who was his dad. So then that had to become a brother situation, so there’s always a fluid motion. … Joel brought an inherent sweetness and comedy to the movie, but the thing I love about him is that he was really ready to dive into the drama because he never gets to do that. So we would amplify some of that stuff. We would talk to Justin about his role, and we would change some of the dialogue to match the kill ‘em with kindness evil that he really has going on.”
Kennedy added: “It’s definitely a fluid process, and I never understand the people that are like, ‘Do not change a word,’ because movies are the most fluid thing in the world. You’re changing them on the day of the shoot.”
MacIntyre, who is also known for V/H/S/99, said he’s a big fan of the Christmas season, but he also wants to explore the fake joy that comes at this time of year. Although he finds the yuletide cheer enjoyable, there’s also a lot of inauthentic happiness in the air, mostly because it’s driven by commerce and the bottom line.
“I think that’s kind of at the heart of what’s contradictory about Christmas, the fact that you have these very genuine family moments, but also they’re being pedaled to you like that,” the director said. “So we needed to understand this kind of toxic joy, and there’s also the inherent fun in taking this very cheery imagery and putting it right next to very horrific situations and other imagery. And so we definitely looked at the dead-eye artifice that you see in some Hallmark movies and this type of performance that those movies give you. They’re this weird uncanny value reflection of reality or what we want reality to be apparently. … And so I like the idea that the first 10 minutes of the movie, people are performing on that level. They have this kind of gee-whiz quality to them, and then once this tragedy strikes, then we’re with our main character in experiencing that same joy, but now it’s getting on their nerves. Then when you zap it out of the movie, then you’re in this different type of nightmare.”
MacIntyre added: “So I didn’t want it to be like f— joy, Christmas is bullshit — because I don’t think it is. I do think it comes from this place of genuinely caring about each other, and that’s what the message of the movie is about, trying to be there for everyone. There’s this tendency for it to get commoditized in a way that isn’t always in your best interest.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
It’s a Wonderful Knife, written by Michael Kennedy and directed by Tyler MacIntyre, is now playing in movie theaters. The movie will be released on Shudder and AMC+ at a later date. Click here for more information.
