It’s a Wonderful Knife takes George Bailey’s beloved story and turns it into a trendy horror romp.
Turning traditional films or film tropes into slashers has turn out to be one thing of a pattern recently. Happy Death Day introduced thrills to the Groundhog Day plot. Freaky took its cues from Freaky Friday and different body-swap movies. The lately launched Totally Killer put a bloody spin on Back to the Future. This weekend, It’s a Wonderful Knife hits theaters, and you’ll guess which traditional Christmas film impressed the brand new slasher.
Tragedy Girls director Tyler MacIntyre and Freaky screenwriter Michael Kennedy teamed up for It’s a Wonderful Knife, taking the enduring story of George Bailey and giving it a trendy spin, whereas additionally placing a serial killer at its heart. It’s a Wonderful Life is already a tragic story at instances, however turning it into a slasher is a problem in and of itself. Ahead of the movie’s launch, ComicBook.com spoke with MacIntyre and Kennedy about how they introduced the killer Christmas story to life.
“I’ve always wanted to do a Christmas slasher, and so when I just thought about how I would do Freaky and Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life was the first thing that came to my head,” Kennedy stated. “There’s such a unique template to that movie to begin with that also fits really well in horror, and I think that movie in a lot of ways has some horror elements, whether people realize it or not. With [the idea that] you’re not born and the world sucks because you’re not around and you want to kill yourself. There’s just a lot of darkness in that movie already that I felt it was worthy of exploring in the genre.”
There are instances when It’s a Wonderful Knife will get fairly meta with its connections to the unique Christmas traditional, going so far as to call drop characters like George Bailey and Clarence. But it by no means takes the meta commentary too far, focusing in on the journeys of its leads, Winnie and Bernie.
“We did talk early on about not being too preoccupied with it being meta, knowing that with the number of references and stuff like that, that things would naturally float to the top,” MacIntyre defined. “But we were more concerned about trying to keep the main story authentic. That was always the kind of guiding thing we wanted. If you’re telling a slasher story, usually they’re not super uplifting. The goal was like, ‘Can we land that plane? Can we do the uplifting slasher movie, that is uplifting in the way that It’s a Wonderful Life is?’ And that was something that we were much more concerned about than the tools. We definitely wanted it to be fun the whole way through, but primarily just kept out beat on the emotions of it.”
It’s a Wonderful Knife is now enjoying in theaters. The movie will probably be obtainable to stream solely on Shudder at a later date.
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