Carnage for Christmas: A fun slasher with some darker themes (Fantasia)
Fantasia Festival Film - Horror/LGBTQ
I’m celebrating Christmas in July to kick off the Fantasia Festival. Carnage for Christmas, by the young and incredibly talented Australian filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay, makes its debut tonight at the festival. It is a fun take on the holiday slasher genre.Â
Lola (Jeremy Moineau) is a true crime podcaster who came to this life after a serial killer known as The Toymaker ripped through her small town of Purdan. As Christmas rolls around again, Lola prepares to return to her hometown but is concerned about returning as a trans woman. When she arrives, her sister Danielle (Dominique Booth) shows her around town, introducing her to the queer community that is beginning to thrive there. But just as Lola starts to find some peace, The Toymaker returns to wreak havoc on the quiet town.
Carnage for Christmas manages to do an excellent job of creating a fun slasher movie and looking at topics that trans people, and trans women specifically, have to face. What worked was that Lola’s transness didn’t have anything to do with The Toymaker, so that those scenes could revel in the over-the-top violence. But outside of that, there is this undercurrent of legitimate fears that exist for trans women that allows this to have a menace that isn’t actually about the villain at all.
The performances are all solid. There’s nothing that is revelatory, but also nothing that is so overwrought or wooden that it requires mention. Ultimately, it was great to be able to see so many queer people on screen at once. Audiences are rarely afforded the opportunity to see trans performers, so the chance to watch a film created by and centered on a trans woman is a real treat.
Despite the low budget for this movie (only around $10,000), the production value is quite good. There is an animated section at the beginning of the film while Lola tells her story, and it looks fantastic. Vera Drew, the writer, director, and star of The People’s Joker, came in as the editor for this film, and she brings a lot of style to it, even within the limited budget. There is a lot of sophistication in this movie that I would not have expected from an 18-year-old (at the time) director, but Mackay has impeccable instincts, and given a serious budget, she is going to be someone to watch.Â
As a horror film, Carnage for Christmas isn’t particularly scary. There are a couple of decent jumps, and the gore works within the context of the movie and the budget, but overall, I still really enjoyed this movie. The underlying message that when your whole existence is fraught with potential danger, a murderous Santa Claus isn’t all that frightening works brilliantly.