Red Christmas

Red Christmas, written and directed by Steve Rudzinski, is a POV documentary for serial killer Tara. The movie starts in medias res with a home invasion going horrible wrong. The invader stumbles upon something that shocks him so much he doesn't expect Tara, who knocks him unconscious. Now the narrative starts at the beginning of the documentary, where Tara is describing why she is a serial killer and what lead her down that path. She states how she expects at some point to get caught and is using this documentary to describe everything. She is a hedonistic serial killer (which is described later in the film) that only targets men during December, killing two to three before Christmas Day. The rest of the movie details her picking a target and then her torturing him.

I went in with no knowledge of the movie outside of it being a "Christmas horror movie" by one of my favorite indie creators. To be honest, I did have medium expectations because "Christmas horror movies" can usually be cliché and follow a normal path. Yet there was nothing cliché about this! While Christmas was an important plot of the movie, the director stated that was almost a happy accident that he didn't plan in the beginning.

Yet Rudzinski definitely did a great job of finding ways to include Christmas iconography throughout the whole film. You could easily play Bingo with Christmas icons and win mid-way through the movie. Mistletoe, wreaths, and Nutcrackers are just a few with many more used. And it's not just that these items were shown in the background, they each played an important part somehow in the film! I cannot think of this movie working as well as it did if its core was any other holiday. The way the popular Christmas items were used ended up being incredibly unique and actually made me excited to see it shown.

Another thing that impressed me was the practical effects. There weren't any CGI effects at all, which was impressive considering some of the effects were done in the middle of a scene. For example, there is one scene that is a single take where after a certain event the victim needs to be bloodied. I would have expected them to cut the scene to apply the blood makeup but they actually figured out a way to apply it in less than a second off camera without a cut. I was highly impressed by that! There was one scene, which I don't want to spoil, that uses practical effects that could have been performed a cheating way but they went all out and it was amazing! I only really have 2 complaints about the movie. One issue I had is that the victim (played by Seth Gontkovic) didn't always seem to portray his character as scared or hurt as it could. Overall he did a great job as the victim, don't get me wrong! Yet there were times where he was very chill knowing he was able to be tortured and killed. Not as frantic as I'd have expected. The other complaint is that the blood was a bit too thin. It's a small complaint, I know, but watery blood just frustrates me. Cody Ruch, who did the special effects, did an amazing job of all the effects but for me the thin blood was distracting in one vital scene.

Obviously the good far outweighs the bad. Amie Wrenn, who portrayed Tara, was downright amazing. The way she described serial killing as bring joy to Christmas was chilling. She got to show a wide range of the emotional spectrum throughout the film and did a great job of it. There was one in particular long scene that was a single take of over 5 minutes with her in the bathroom that was downright phenomenal acting.

Rudzinski, as usual, uses his knack for down-to-earth dialogue loaded with puns and sarcasm to craft a Christmas masterpiece. I definitely plan on recommending this to my friends as it should be part of everyone's Christmas watching. I was impressed that he was even able to tie this movie into his shared universe of films!

It turns out this is the second feature of filmmaker Steve Rudzinski that I've watched. I quite enjoyed 'A meowy Christmas' as it leaned into the absurdity of the screenplay, and 'Red Christmas' very much mirrors that piece in its craft: very low budget, very blunt and direct, and very abbreviated. Clocking in at only 55 minutes, this is distinctly ham- and heavy-handed in nearly every regard. Dialogue, characters, scene writing, narrative, direction, camerawork, lighting, acting, effects, and essentially all else feel terribly contrived and artificial. For all that, I do like the concept behind the film, of a young serial killer enthusiastically making a home movie about her exploits.

However, 'A meowy Christmas' benefited from a sense of humor echoing Internet sketch comedy circa 2010, compensating for its rough production values and low acting skills and making the end result feel like a full-length rendition of a smaller idea. Except for a short sequence near the very end, 'Red Christmas' lacks the same robust liveliness and jocularity that would allow its offbeat dark humor to land, and that leaves us with the horror of the violence on hand. The scenario and protagonist Tara's nonchalant malevolence should inherently provide some manner of visceral thrill, but the meager resources and uncareful consideration for the film's construction means that this element is severely dampened.

Short and simple as the story is, I think there are some good ideas here, including Tara's motivations, reasoning, and logic as she herself delineates, and the holiday-themed tortures she devises for her victim. Maybe I'm being overly generous, yet while severely limited by the nature of 'Red Christmas' as we see it, I'm inclined to think star Amie Wrenn would demonstrate fine capability as an actor, given the opportunity. Even considering the weak build here as context, though, the sense of inauthenticity is overwhelming, some scenes are unnecessarily long, and others are still generally overdone by comparison. In fairness, I suppose if this were a major big-budget production, the blood and gore would be too realistic and grotesque to be enjoyable. But that doesn't do much to help this picture's case.

I think there are entertaining, worthwhile aspects of this film. I also want to like it more than I do. I see potential in the premise, but what Rudzinski was working with to bring his own screenplay to life was insufficient to truly sell it. Call this a swing and a miss - I appreciate the effort on such an obvious shoestring budget, but there's just not enough value here to outweigh the deficiencies. 'Red Christmas' isn't entirely bad, but there's no especial reason to watch this, either.

Recommendable if you're open to features of any level of quality, and especially if with that in mind you're looking for something to watch but are short on time.