Where I Watched It: AMC Plus

English Audio Description?: No

Cast: Jane Widdop, Joel McHale, Justin Long, Jess McCloud, Katherine Isabelle, Aiden Howard, and Erin Boyce.

Written By: Michael Kennedy

Directed By: Tyler MacIntyre

Considering last year Violent Night was a bit of a riff on home Alone, it makes sense that another Christmas classic would be up for revamping. In case you can’t put two and two together, it’s A Wonderful Knife is very similar to It’s A Wonderful Life. Winnie is your average teenager, hanging out with her teenage friends. Her dad works closely with a very motivated individual looking to revamp the town. One night, Winnie and her friends are attacked by a killer, and she loses some of her friends before she’s able to stop the killer. However, this shockingly has a negative impact on her life, as people view her differently, and her whole family dynamic changes, which leads her to imagine what life would be like without her.

So, she gets her wish, and finds herself living in an alternate reality where the killer has never been stopped, and the town is very different. It turns out, because she wasn’t there that night, more people died, further shifting her circle of friends, and causing her to rely upon the outcast in school to hopefully believe that she’s telling the truth when she says she knows who the killer is. Will Winnie stop him a second time? Even if she does, can she ever get her real life back?

It’s amazing I described the movie that well considering AMC Plus continues to not prioritize offering audio description for its blind and visually impaired users. Not only do they not seek out titles where someone else has already made the track, but for Shudder originals (which this is), they’re still not providing audio description. This runs alongside other Shudder originals from this year, like influencer and Children Of The Corn that premiered without audio description. Don’t even get me started on Skinamarink.

So, I wasn’t able to tell who was being attacked, who died, who was even in the scene. i had no idea where the killer was coming from, was it a surprise, can we see him lurking around? What does he look like? There’s no description of any of the kill sequences, so I don’t know what the gore is. it seems silly to request gore, but I’m also thinking of other blind horror fans who would love for the niche library of Shudder to embrace audio description.

This has the same vibe as Totally Killer which was released in September, and I think if this had audio description I’d probably recommend it. However, with so much stuff having no context, I just have the basic building blocks of possibility. That’s not enough to truly be able to give an opinion, and I wouldn’t ask any of my blind or visually impaired readers to attempt to sit through this without audio description.

Perhaps, one day, AMC Plus will start to care about their level of accessibility. In the meantime, I just have to keep rating their content with the grade it deserves.

Final Grade: unwatchable