It's a Wonderful Knife is a 2023 holiday slasher film written by Michael Kennedy (Freaky) and directed by Tyler MacIntyre (Tragedy Girls). It stars Jane Widdop, Jess McLeod, Joel McHale, and Justin Long.
As the title implies, the film is a slasher movie take on the It's a Wonderful Life formula. In the Christmas-loving town of Angel Falls, it has been one year since the mayor (Long) donned an angel costume and went on a violent killing spree that ended in his own death. One year later, Winnie, a survivor of the attack, mourns the death of her best friend at the mayor's hands and enters a spiral of Survivor Guilt that ends in her wishing she was never born. Her wish is granted, but there's just one catch: she's the one who killed the mayor. Now Winnie is trapped in a version of Angel Falls where nobody remembers her and the mayor has been able to continue his killings, forcing Winnie to act to set things right.
The film was released in theaters November 10, 2023. Not to be confused with the short film of the same name.
Previews: Trailer
It's a Wonderful Knife includes examples of the following:
- Action Girl: Winnie and later Bernie are both girls in their late teenage years. They show great skill in evading being killed, using improvised weapons and turning the tables on the Angel Killer.
- Affectionate Nickname: Winnie is nicknamed Win by some of her family and friends.
- All of the Other Reindeer: For no clear reason, Bernie's mocked and shunned. Kids her age mock Bernie by referring to her as Weirdo.
- Amicable Exes: In the epilogue when Winnie catches her ex and his new girlfriend, after previously chewing them out, she tells them that she's fine and they're better together. Given that she's developed feelings for Bernie at this point, it's pretty clear why she wouldn't want to get back together with him.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Winnie is a sweet, loving person. She was also the one to put Henry Waters down in both timelines.
- Big Bad: It's revealed early on that the Mayor is the killer in the angel costume.
- The Big Damn Kiss: Right before Winnie returns to the original timeline at last, Winnie and Bernie kiss, confirming their feelings for each other. After she's returned home, Winnie runs to Bernie's house. They kiss again after Bernie reveals she's got Ripple Affect Proof Memory and remembers what happened, with the film ending as the pair happily plan to celebrate Christmas together.
- The Blank: The Angel Killer wears a blank white mask reminiscent of the Slender Man.
- Cassandra Truth: Obviously, no one believes Winnie's tale that she's from this town and they all know her at first, let alone her claims that the kindly town mayor is the serial killer terrorizing the place. However, she manages to convince Bernie and her aunt Gale, who help her.
- Cast Full of Gay: Jimmy, Gale, Karen, Bernie and Winnie are all queer.
- Closet Key: Bernie, another girl, appears to be this for Winnie, who begins the film by dating a boy without being depicted as liking girls before her.
- Condescending Compassion: In the alternate timeline, when Henry Waters meets the young adult Winnie after she just escaped a killer, he pulls her into a forced hug and talks like a parent comforting a toddler that scraped their knee. And this is before he becomes actively hostile to her.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Henry Waters. A greedy land developer and a Serial Killer to boot.
- Crapsack World: True to It's a Wonderful Plot fashion, Winnie wished herself into a world where she wasn't there to stop Waters, who is still killing several people in Angel Falls, while controlling things as the mayor. He’s been able to buy most of the property in the town and the rest has fallen into disrepair. The townspeople have given in to the prospect of death with a lot of kids turning to hard drugs to cope. Winnie’s brother is dead, and her family has fallen apart with her mother being an alcoholic and her father falling under Water’s mysterious mind control which he’s also used on multiple townspeople.
- Damsel out of Distress: Winnie and then Bernie as well manages to escape the Angel Killer on multiple occasions through bravery, quick thinking or simply fast reactions. Both are just seemingly ordinary teenage girls.
- Deathly Unmasking: After killing the angel, Winnie unmasks the corpse to reveal that it's Mayor Waters.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Everyone in school calls Bernie "Weirdo."
- Even Evil Can Be Loved: Henry Waters' brother, Buck is the only one upset about Henry's death at the hands of Winnie and threatens to "end" her. Unfortunately the love isnt reciprocated as Henry has no issue with killing his brother in the alternate timeline after finding out he plans to transfer out of the town.
- Expy:
- Winnie is a Final Girl version of George Bailey, right down to saving her brother's life and then finding out after her wish that he died because she didn't exist to save him. Lampshaded by Bernie. Ultimately subverted when it's revealed that the key to sending Winnie (and Bernie, since she retains her memory) back to the original timeline is Bernie finding out Henry killed Winnie's father and her getting to kill him back. As Winnie says: she's not George, she's Clarence.
- Henry Waters, is Henry F. Potter if the latter was a serial killer on top of a greedy capitalist trying to take over the town. He’s even successful in the world where the protagonist is never born.
- Faux Affably Evil: Henry Waters always acts cheerful and friendly, but it's only very thin, since even aside from being a Serial Killer he's a ruthless land developer who's pushing to buy everything in town.
- Forced to Watch: Winnie can only watch helplessly in both timelines as her best friend, mother and aunt are murdered. She does manage to bring the latter two back however by resetting the timeline.
- Friendless Background: Bernie has no friends starting out, being left on the sidelines at every social gathering which she attends. She's clearly moved by Winnie showing her kindness, and bonds with her quickly.
- Gender-Blender Name: Bernie is a girl, with a nickname more commonly used for boys named Bernard. It may be that her given name is Bernadette, but we don't learn if that's the case.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Winnie initially refrains from using swear words, which Cara lightly teases her over. After she's depressed by Cara's death and mad at her family, Winnie uses the f-word however.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Winnie is a blonde teenage girl who's usually very friendly and kind.
- Hate Sink: Mayor Waters. There is nothing likeable about him, and from the moment we see him you can tell he's a villain. He kills three people before the movie title is even shown, and in the alternate timeline has become a Serial Killer who kills people to take over their businesses, or just because he enjoys killing. The whole time, he talks down to everyone around him and makes it very clear he wants to control the town and everyone in it.
- Helpless Window Death: Downplayed, but after being stabbed, Cara tries to escape through a door back into the house. It's locked, so she can only slam on the window (being seen by everyone inside, who rush to her defense) before dying.
- Hereditary Homosexuality: Winnie has a gay brother and lesbian aunt. By the end of the film, after dating a boy initially, she is all but dating Bernie, another girl.
- Heroic Willpower: In the alternate timeline, Winnie's aunt Gale is the only member of the family who didn't give into despair after Jimmy's murder. Nor after her wife was murdered a few months later.
- Holding Hands: Winnie and Bernie tentatively hold hands in the theatre as they're bonding. It later becomes the first sign of their growing feelings for each other.
- Homage: Winnie knocking out the Angel Killer and her, Bernie, and Gale having to climb over his body is a homage to the car scene in Scream 2.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: Both the original and alternate timeline's murders take place on Christmas Eve. Downplayed in that the text says that the killer is striking at other times of year too, but we don't see those kills.
- Improvised Weapon: Winnie and Bernie too later are adept at using whatever they can find as weapons. It starts with Winnie managing to kill the Angel Killer, saving her brother's life doing so, by using some jumper cables from a Christmas tree display and electrocuting him.
- In the Back: The Angel Killer frequently stabs people to death this way.
- I Take Offense to That Last One: When Winnie snaps that she got a "lesbian tracksuit", Gale (her aunt, a lesbian who's there with her wife) retorts "we would never wear that." Funnily enough, Winnie later falls for another girl herself as well.
- It's a Wonderful Plot: A twist on this - a young woman wishes she was never born and finds herself in a reality where nobody knows her... and the killer she stopped a year ago has been able to continue his rampage.
- Killing in Self-Defense: Winnie has to kill the Angel Killer on multiple occasions to defend herself or other people. Even though it's justified, she's still pretty shaken the first time.
- Lady Drunk: In the alternate timeline, Winnie's mom has devolved into one, constantly drinking around the house with a cold, uncaring personality as she cheats quite openly on her husband to cope after their son was murdered.
- Light Is Not Good: The Angel Killer is dressed as an angel all in white.
- Lipstick Lesbian:
- Gale and her wife Karen. They both have long hair (Gale more than Karen) and wear feminine outfits. This is downplayed however, making the two more chapstick.
- Winnie is a feminine girl with longish hair who likes pink and eventually falls for Bernie, another girl (although she may be bisexual as she'd dated a boy earlier).
- Malevolent Masked Man: The Angel Killer is dressed in a white angel costume and wears a blank mask which covers his face with no eyeholes.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Aside from Winnie getting pulled to another world, there's no concrete evidence of supernatural happenings in the movie, which makes Mayor Waters' hold on the town into this: Did he actually have some sort of magic abilities, or did he just break the townspeople until they became Conditioned to Accept Horror? The former is supported by the townsfolk at his "Naughty or Nice" event being all but zombies and having slightly glowing eyes, while the latter is supported by it being specifically noted that he "broke" David, the townsfolk fighting back before his grip on them breaks, and how his overall control of the town could easily be enough of a deterrent for people fighting back.
- Mayor Pain: Taken to the extreme, as Mayor Waters is a serial killer.
- Mind Control: It's revealed in the climax that Mayor Waters has some form of this as the townspeople all stand still as he murders his own brother and threatens Winnie and Bernie. Their pupils are also a glowing blue. He also implies that he gets more powerful as he kills and that this is how he convinced Winnie's dad to join him even after telling him he killed his son.
- Moral Myopia: Buck confronts Winnie and threatens to kill her for killing his brother a year earlier, completely ignoring the fact that Henry was a serial killer, who killed several people and was in the process of killing Winnie and her brother before Winnie offed him in self defense.
- Murder Is the Best Solution:
- Bernie bluntly states that to reset the timeline, killing Waters is the best way. This turns out to be true, though in truth it's self defense when he's killed, not murder.
- Waters resorts to this in order to get what he wants. In the alternate timeline, he kills the teenage children of the adults that run any business in town, causing the businesses to close down and letting him take over. When Buck puts in for a transfer, Waters kills him in front of a whole crowd rather than let him leave.
- My New Gift Is Lame: Winnie snaps when her Christmas gift is a tracksuit, in contrast to her brother getting a truck. However, her reaction is less due to the gift itself (though that's certainly a factor) and more due to how she still hadn't healed from the previous Christmas yet everyone else was trying to force her to move on, which was piling up on her.
- Nice Girl: Winnie is a kind, sweet girl overall. Starting out she's established as better than the other kids for being polite to the social outcast Bernie, who's mocked and shunned by the rest. However, she's less nice when very depressed over Cara's death and her family ignoring it, understandly. This is temporary, and Winnie bounces back later though.
- Outliving One's Offspring: In the alternate timeline, Winnie's parents have both been devastated by her brother's murder. David's only purpose in life is serving Waters, while Judy was become a Lady Drunk. She learns the killer intentionally did this not only with them but many other people, killing their kids and then buying up whatever property they had afterward when this drives them to leave town over how depressed they've become.
- Parental Abandonment: Bernie tells Winnie her dad left when she was two, while her mom is negligent and more interested in her string of boyfriends than her, as just one more hardship Bernie's faced.
- Patricide: Winnie has to kill her dad in the alternate timeline, who's been put under Water's spell and is now killing for him, when he's attacked her.
- Pink Means Feminine: Winnie is a very feminine girl, and pink's apparently her favorite color.
- Please Wake Up: Winnie says this to Cara after she's been fatally stabbed by the killer.
- Police Are Useless: Winnie initially reports witnessing a murder to the police in the alternate timeline. When they show up though she's shocked to see that Buck Waters is now the town sheriff, knowing his brother is the killer. His brother soon shows up too, and Winnie backtracks quickly, knowing that he won't help as a result. For the rest of the film she never attempts to report anything again.
- Precision F-Strike: Winnie cusses out her family on the second Christmas when she's mad at them, and drops the f bomb twice when doing so.
- Preserve Your Gays: In the alternate timeline, Winnie's gay brother and lesbian aunts were all murdered. Her restoration of the original timeline resets things so they're kept alive, at the same time she's established as queer herself over her feelings for Bernie, the girl who helped her do this, while both survive to be happy together.
- Queer Establishing Moment:
- Winnie's brother Jimmy early on is introduced as gay, then her aunt Gale arrives with her wife Karen as well, later joking about her lesbianism to Winnie.
- Though it's not as evident at first, Winnie bonds with Bernie as they fight to stop the Angel Killer, and it becomes clear the girls have feelings for each other as they share a passionate kiss before Winnie's sent back into the original timeline. After meeting there, the pair kiss again and go out to have breakfast at Winnie's house for Christmas together.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Winnie and Bernie still retain their memories of the alternate timeline after Winnie undoes her wish.
- Serial Killer: Henry Waters, the Angel Killer, is a ruthless businessman who murders the people who stand in the way of him buying up the town. Later he also had David kill for him as well, after breaking his mind by murdering David's son. It's stated he kills every couple weeks or so.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Winnie, in the throws of depression, wishes she'd never been born. This turns out to mean the Serial Killer who she killed is still alive to murder her brother (who she originally saved) and many other people. Winnie has to set things right and reset the original timeline because of this.
- Sibling Murder: Waters murders his own brother when he tries to leave town.
- Something Only They Would Say: Winnie proves she's related to Gale in the alternate timeline after recounting an embarrassing incident from Gale's past that only a close relative would know about.
- Shout-Out: Winnie's aunt is named Gale Prescott.
- Signs of Disrepair: There is a sign in the alternate reality Angel Falls that is vandalized to read DEMON Falls.
- Slimeball: Waters is an Obviously Evil spray tanned, personification of Capitalism Is Bad with terrible veneer implants who has half the town fooled.
- The Sociopath: Henry Waters. A corrupt and merciless businessman who's also a Serial Killer who kills people who interfere with his ambitious plans (and For the Evulz as well) with no remorse at all. In the alternate timeline we finds out Watters also killed Jimmy (because Winnie wasn't there to stop it), driving his father to madness and becoming another Angel Killer under his control, and he has no qualms in killing his own brother after find out he planned to transfer out of town.
- Straight Gay: Jimmy is a boy with an average style who's gay and an athlete.
- String Theory: Bernie leads Winnie to her room, where she's got a billboard covered with clues she collected about the Angel murders all laid out.
- There Are No Therapists: Winnie likely could have handled losing Cara, nearly being murdered and having to kill a Serial Killer better if she'd gotten to see a therapist. However, this possibility is never brought up, and her family tried to act like nothing happened. The whole plot might have been avoided if they'd been different.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Winnie briefly goes from a Nice Girl into cussing at her family, depressed over her friend Cara's death and how they treat her/react to this. She's returned to her old self by the end of the movie.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Winnie's family, before her timeline swap, seems almost dismissive of her and seem to genuinely believe the tracksuit they got her is an equivalent gift to her brother getting a truck - not to mention how they refer to the tracksuit as "something she needs" - all while telling her to just move on from the previous year's trauma. After Winnie gets back from the other timeline, her family gifts her a new camera and apologizes for not giving her time to heal. Particularly odd in this case because nobody besides Winnie and Bernie is aware of what happened, meaning this change quite literally happened overnight with no catalyst (beyond Winnie yelling at them and going missing for the next day).
- Trauma Conga Line: Winnie first can only watch as her best friend Cara is murdered. Then she's got to save herself and her brother from the same Serial Killer. She's forced to kill him, and spends a year falling into depression as her family pretend that nothing happened rather than giving her support. She, understandably, withdraws a bit, and discovers her boyfriend is cheating on her with her friend in her absence. Winnie gets so depressed she wishes on an aurora that she'd never been born. Her wish comes true, which it turns out made this all much worse, as without Winnie's presence the killer had murdered her brother and far more people as well. She has to stop him with the help of Bernie, a girl who's a social outcast in town and has suffered a lot from being ostracized along with a poor home life herself.
- Trust Password: Winnie convinces her aunt Gale of her identity in the other reality by mentioning how Gale's ass froze to the ground during Christmas 1999 because she wore a thong that year.
- Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Mayor Waters letting others handle his killings for the past year has evidently caused his ability to be a direct physical threat to wane as when Bernie and Winnie confront him, they knock him out with their bare hands and when he attempts to strangle Winnie, he is quickly stabbed by Bernie.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Only Winnie knows kindly town mayor Henry is really the Angel.
- Wham Shot: The reveal that Winnie's dad is the killer in the altered timeline.
- Wintry Auroral Sky: Winnie makes her wish never to be born under an aurora. It's explicitly mentioned they aren't far enough north to have the aurora borealis show up over their town so it's no natural phenomena. Bernie tells Winnie of town folklore that a wish made under an aurora will come true (which is right). She wishes to come back under it too, and Bernie surmises it won't work after the aurora fades. After they kill the mayor, Winnie wishes again and is able to get back into the original timeline.
