Essential Christmas · 2024
Alice Maio Mackay was a teenager when she made this on next to no money, and both show.
Rent or buy · Apple TV →The CineClaus Christmas score
A different kind of Christmas.
A little magic in the making.
Five ingredients make the Festive Factor.
Open an ingredient to find out more.
What we ask: Take Christmas out. Does the plot survive? Worth up to 30 of the 100 points.
What we ask: How much of the running time is visibly Christmas? Worth up to 20 of the 100 points.
What we ask: How many kinds of Christmas icon turn up on screen: trees, lights, snow, carols and the rest? Worth up to 15 of the 100 points.
What we ask: Does the ending depend on what Christmas means: goodwill, family, redemption, belief? Worth up to 20 of the 100 points.
What we ask: Is it actually watched at Christmas in the UK? Worth up to 15 of the 100 points.
Mixed in tone. Grim. A bittersweet ending.
Festive Factor measures how Christmassy a film is. Five ingredients add up to 100: story (30), setting (20), seasonal details (15), emotional heart (20) and returning tradition (15).
Cosiness is a separate score for warmth of tone, sense of safety, visual comfort, a reassuring ending and how easily you can settle into it.
How the Festive Factor works →
Carnage for Christmas · Rental and purchase cost extra, separately from membership.
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A young trans woman who hosts a true-crime podcast goes back to her small Australian hometown for Christmas, the first time she has been home since leaving and transitioning. When people close to her start dying, it looks as though a Santa-suited killer from local legend has returned, and she has to crack the case before the town is torn apart. It is a gory, campy, micro-budget slasher-whodunit with a lot to say about how trans people are treated.
Alice Maio Mackay was a teenager when she made this on next to no money, and both show.
It is a scrappy, gory slasher-whodunit about a true-crime podcaster heading home for an Australian summer Christmas, and its real subject is how a small town treats a trans woman who left. The season sets the date more than it drives the plot, and the tension sags in places, but it is short enough never to outstay its welcome.
Queer horror fans who like slashers camp and angry will forgive the rough edges for a film so firmly on its lead's side.
Our take: gore is the whole selling point and the killings come thick and fast; it carried an unclassified 18+ listing at its Australian festival screening, so keep it from children and younger teens.
The faces in front of the camera, and the people who brought the story to life.
For the fans who stay after the credits.
On set
Alice Maio Mackay directed and produced the film and co-wrote it with Ben Pahl Robinson. Fantasia's programme notes described her as a 19-year-old filmmaker working somewhere between no budget and micro-budget.
Movie magic
Vera Drew, who directed The People's Joker, cut the film remotely from the US while the production was in Australia.
Movie magic
Fangoria's August 2023 first look named Adele Shearwin as the effects artist, who was also working on the Philippou brothers' Talk 2 Me at the time.
On set
Jeremy Moineau, who plays Lola, had never acted on screen before. Nerdly noted it was both a first role and a first lead.
Each production story is linked to its source, in our own words. Ending details stay behind a spoiler reveal.
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