The best Christmas horror movies are the ones that use the trappings and traditions of the season in interesting, thematically tied ways. Think Black Christmas and its take on pregnancy, birth, life, and death at Christmas time, or the way Rare Exports reinvents the Santa myth. Sure, you can take any garden variety horror film and slap some lights and snowmen in it, and I’ll have a good time, but when you make Christmas a part of your film’s core? I’m excited.
Red Snow, a new Scandinavian horror film that world premiered at Fantastic Fest this week, is that kind of film, beginning with its witty juxtaposition of Santa and vampire and continuing all the way through its resolution. It doesn’t always hold together, but when it does, it’s an absolute ball, with a few things to say along the way.
It’s Christmas, and rebellious, vampire-obsessed teen Johanna (Anni Iikkanen) is having a rough time. Here, Mom’s off somewhere without her, while her Dad (Kari Hietalahti) is too busy waving around his new live-in fiancée (Marja-Liisa Nguyen) to care that she’s struggling. Throw in a clueless little brother (Otava Rossi) and a Christmas dinner at Grandma’s (Eeva Litmanen), and it’s not a happy Christmas.
At least Grandma’s rich, though, and willing to indulge Johanna’s grit up to a point, even if she does think vampires are silly. The source of all the family’s money – including her father’s – Grandma demands a celebration on Christmas night, and to help out, Johanna’s father’s called in Santa.
But while the man who shows up at the door (Hannu-Pekka Bjorkman), specifying that he must be invited in, might look like Santa Claus, he’s actually a different kind of ageless legendary being entirely, and he’s very hungry.
Yes, this is a movie about a vampire Santa terrorizing a dysfunctional family at Christmas, and that’s as fun as it sounds. Writer and director Ilja Rautsi knows we came to see blood and guts and flying limbs, and he gives it to us, in part by bringing in a ringer in the form of a gruff old vampire hunter (Tommi Korpela) and his misanthropic home care nurse (Krista Kosonen).
As the first act unfolds, the script wisely builds in layers of opposition between various characters, including some who have no idea that they’re destined to fight someone else. So when the blood starts to flow, a really ingenious flow of horror chaos ensues that makes the film feel like You’re Next meets Fright Night.
It helps, of course, that the cast is having a ball, diving deep into gallows humor, shifting allegiances, and just plain weird moments of body horror with not just commitment, but joy. Iikkanen is every bit the star, but she’s encircled by a cast of scene-stealers, especially Bjorkman, who makes us hate him even as he gets us on his side every once in a while. The fun they’re having is infectious, but all the mirth of the picture is not contained to the actor.
Red Snow is verbally witty and packed with great moments of tragicomic acting, but it’s also a visually witty film, thanks to cinematographer Kertu Hakkarainen and editor Eric Backstrom. The film adores the “Red” of its title, draping Grandman’s mansion in heavy curtains and carpets that make it feel like an ocean of blood growing thicker by the minute. The pacing is smart, shuffling between perspectives as characters split up or find themselves forced apart, but it never loses the primary thread, the dance between Johanna and the vampire.
It’s here that we have to talk about the often deft way that Red Snow handles the themes of Christmas within its story. On the surface, it’s just funny to think of the shared immortality of Santa and vampires, so putting them together is a nice idea. It also just looks cool, and the Red Snow team made sure to do more than play by the simple two-fanged rules so common to the genre.
But what is Santa Claus? He is an all-powerful, omniscient master of time and space, and yet (metaphorically speaking) we let him into our home because we trust him to also be an avatar of kindness and joy. More than that, we invite him, and we leave out cookies and milk to thank him for his visit. Santa gives, vampires take. The juxtaposition is just too good to pass up, and then the film goes further to make Santa’s dominance, like this vampire’s dominance, part of the patriarchal machinery that’s, in Johanna’s mind, holding her and all the women around her back. The men in her life are bleeding her dry, so why can’t a vampire?
Are these ideas always enunciated perfectly in the grammar of the film? Not quite. Do they sometimes get muddled by mixed metaphors and symbolic overreaches? Maybe. But Red Snow, on top of all its bloody fun, is also trying to be about something, something we might think about even more at Christmas time.
That’s good Christmas horror, and I can’t wait to watch this one again on a cold December night.
Red Snow premiered at Fantastic Fest and has been acquired by Shudder. Release info TBA.
