It's a Wonderful Knife

Is it the utterly charming enthusiasm of the story that manages to keep tension in a situation that feels like it shouldn’t because it’s an alternate reality? Is it the adorable chemistry between the two main characters? Is it the way it somehow manages to maintain the morality of It’s A Wonderful Life while also balancing comedy and a slasher movie? And that not only does the main character learn the lesson at hand, but so do the people around her? Is it the way this works as two versions of the same story at the same time, and it pulls at the heartstrings in a simple, effective way? Am i just a sucker for these “take a known wholesome concept and make it a slasher comedy” subgenre? All of it, but I don’t care. This was fun. A damned lot of fun. It has some intensity and manages to make the stakes of a not-the-real-world reality seem important. It has a unique killer design in The Angel (sort of an all white Doctor Strange with an opaque white fencing mask). It has comedy where it needs it, never intruding on the story, always spicing it up at the right moments. And it knows when to get at your heart, like a good Christmas movie should. This may be a new a Christmas must watch for me like Die Hard and Christmas Vacation.