It’s been a few days since I saw Red Christmas and I’ll be honest, I’m still not sure how I feel about it. In many ways, it’s an unconventional film that has stuck with me, but it gets tripped up by several uneven performances from its cast, subpar camerawork, and a killer that’s hard to root for, or even against. For a movie that takes some chances with its material (more on that soon), Red Christmas misses the opportunity to do anything interesting with its challenging premise.
Red Christmas’ opening takes us 20 years into the past at an abortion clinic where a woman is undergoing a procedure as a nutjob sets up a bombing attack on those working inside. Once mayhem is unleashed, everyone is thrown into a state of disarray, and the antagonist behind the bombing rescues from a bucket an aborted fetus, who somehow survived the procedure.
Fast forward to the present, and we meet Dee Wallace’s character, Diane, who just wants nothing more than to spend Christmas with her family; Diane’s plans are thwarted, though, when a masked and disfigured entity by the name of Cletus (Sam Campbell) shows up on her doorstep looking for “Mother.” She quickly realizes that no matter how hard you try to bury your past, it will always catch up to you one way or another.
As I mentioned, there are a lot of really admirable aspects of Red Christmas that I wholly appreciate, but by and large, they don’t make up for many of the film’s missteps that hinder its promising premise. There’s no doubt that we’ve never seen a revenge tale quite like the one writer/director Craig Anderson has crafted with Red Christmas, it’s just that I don’t know precisely the point he was trying to make with his story.
By using a botched abortion as the catalyst behind Red Christmas, there is an opportunity to address these real-life issues from either side of the spectrum—whether you’re for or against abortion rights—but instead, what we get is a family that’s rather unlikeable and a villain that’s not compelling enough to empathize with or root for. There’s a lot of Red Christmas that just rings too hollow for me to fully enjoy it, and I wish Anderson had done more to take his challenging idea and really run with it.
Many of the scenes are painfully disjointed at times, especially during some of Red Christmas’ more action-y moments, and while I love the way the film is lit (most of the night scenes feel like a candy-colored nightmare), oftentimes the camera choices made by the movie’s DP make for scenes that are not framed properly and detract from the positive aspects of Red Christmas’ look.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Red Christmas left an impact on me that has lasted long after I watched it, so there is something to be said for that, because I want movies to give me that kind of experience as a viewer. But as a whole, other than its unusual approach to creating a villain, there’s really not much else that I enjoyed about the film. Overall, Red Christmas is just one missed opportunity after the next, and I’m left wishing Anderson had done more with both his story and his characters.
Movie Score: 2/5
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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