Tyler MacIntyre on Meshing Horror and Christmas in ‘It’s a Wonderful Knife’
Action movies, horror movies, and holiday movies are all three distinct genres. When they overlap, that’s when things really start to shine. Whether it’s in movies like Die Hard where we have fights about whether or not that’s a Christmas movie or horror movies to watch over Christmas, sometimes you just want some gore with your holiday cheer. That’s where It’s a Wonderful Knife comes into play.
Directed by Tyler MacIntyre, the film is a play on the classic It’s a Wonderful Life and focuses on Winnie (Jane Widdop) wishing she was never born, which ushers in a whole lot of blood shed for her home town and her family. When I asked MacIntyre about the excitement of this kind of niche genre, he talked about being a horror fan and this time of year when fans of the genre still want to celebrate their love for it while everyone else has moved on to Christmas cheer.
“I love Christmas movies and I also love Christmas horror movies,” MacIntyre said. “So, I think it’s inherently fun because you want the contrast, the juxtaposition that’s created by this kind of cheery imagery and this horrific imagery is super fun. But Christmas is also just an outlandish high stakes time where you’re with the people you love, but there’s tension. So it gives you a lot of fun sort of dynamics to mind. Also I think the audience of this movie, horror fans, need something to watch around the holidays. So, as a lifelong horror fan, I do kind of, I have my set of kind of movies that I like to revisit around the holidays. And it was good. It’s something that as soon as I kind of got into the idea of it and took a look at the script, this is something I felt like there was a lot of potential for the little details to kind of help out.”
You can see the rest of our conversation here:
It’s a Wonderful Knife is in theaters now.
(featured image: Shudder)
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