Slightly Hidden Horror Gem #110

"Oh, well, your brother got a new truck." "What? Are you fucking kidding me? But Dad gets me a lesbian tracksuit?"

I ended up having fun with this film. When it gets into the slasher bit, it is well done and entertaining. Moreover, the bizarre tone of the dialogue in the first 10 to 20 minutes does go away.

In fact, the moment adorable bang girl gets out of whatever this Christmas hell-village and goes to the land of not-existing, the dialogue changes completely. The film becomes witty and violent and enjoyable, with a really great friendship plot that I actually cared about. That was nice not hating the protagonists; I really enjoyed that! Other screenwriters and directors please take note.

Alright, so, I will confess that I am one of those people who has an allergic reaction to It's a Wonderful Life and thinks that the world would be better off without that film because Frank Capra would still have a career and because people would recognize It Happened One Night and Arsenic and Old Lace as his masterpieces.

Consequently, I've seen It's a Wonderful Life in fragments across decades of Christmas parties. So the moment this film gets into it's-a-wonderful-lifey stuff, I am totally lost. But it turns out it's not important because this is a slasher and the mechanism of traveling to alternate universes must be different from the original. If not I'm missing out.

There's really sweet female friendships and casual queerness that felt very real without making a statement. In other words, it was nice. It just had to get past all of that saccharine weirdness. I know now what it must be like for the Christmas Bloody Christmas friendship haters. If that banter hurt them as much as this preliminary nostalgic sappy small town weirdo bonding festival, I now sympathize.

So I will leave you with two things. A strong recommendation to give it half an hour to get good is the first. Second, every movie of this sort has a playback speed where the long pauses and boring conversations suddenly become peppy and fun. This film's 1.7x. You need subtitles on. If you find the beginning is not for you, do what I do, play it as fast as you can tolerate so you can enjoy the rest. You kinda want to go back to 1x when you think there will be murders.

I loved this,I'm on board with it. I will force my family to watch this every Christmas no problem. Maybe next year I will love the whole thing. This was good fun.

Relevant Lists:
Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and Candidates
Index of Lists

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