Dee Wallaceas DianeThe story
About Red Christmas
Dee Wallace plays a mother who gathers her grown-up, bickering children and their partners at the remote family home for a last Christmas together. Midway through the day an uninvited, disfigured stranger turns up with a letter that drags an old family secret into the open. She sends him away, and he comes back that night to take his revenge on the household. The squabbles of a tense family reunion give way to a bloody, darkly comic siege, and the mother has to fight to keep what is left of her family alive.
The CineClaus verdict
A family Christmas reunion turns into a siege, and the film takes the reunion more seriously than you might expect.
Dee Wallace holds it together as a mother whose old secret walks up the drive in a cloak and bandages. The first half is bickering and grief; the second is a gory, darkly comic slasher lit almost entirely by fairy lights.
It tackles abortion and disability directly and does not tidy either away. It is bleak and very gory, and it ends badly for almost everyone.
The family desk
Can the kids watch?
Our take: adults only: strong, bloody violence and gory injury detail run through the second half, and the story turns on an abortion.
Content advice & accessibility
- Our age guidance
- Editorial, separate from the official 18 certificate, and never looser than it.
