Frights and Feelings: Carnage for Christmas

Halfway to Christmas and deep in Pride Month, “Carnage for Christmas” gifts us a slasher wrapped in tinsel, trauma, and trans truth.

Alice Maio Mackay is one of my favorites in underground contemporary horror. She and writing partner Benjamin Pahl Robinson know how to create characters that are likable and plots that are infectiously enjoyable. There are very few people working with her sort of emotional and moral compass. Her films have blistering bits of reality in them that make them relevant and edgy in a necessary way.

I have waxed poetic about how I sincerely wish Wes Craven had lived to see her films and her career blossom because her seventies horror sensibilities and bravery when exploring meta concepts make her one of the heirs apparent to his throne of scrappy, genre-blending, and risk-taking horror.

Mackay’s latest offering, the candy-colored and tinsel-tinged CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS (2024), might be her best yet.

Written by Mackay and Robinson and directed by Mackay, the film follows trans true crime podcaster Lola (Jeremy Moineau) as she returns to her hometown for the holidays. A rash of murders breaks out, murders that have a connection to a vicious killer from the town’s dark history.

This slim and mean little film clocks in at 70 minutes, but it packs a wallop, specifically in character and commentary, which brings us to the crux of the story:

The film’s radical empathy invites the viewer to identify with those who may differ from them.

Trans women are women, and trans women deserve accurate representation.

Horror has a fraught history when it comes to trans women, some of it has been reclaimed by the trans and queer communities and garnered critical reassessment (i.e., this book on Sleepaway Camp by BJ and Harmony Colangelo). In contrast, others have been noted for their problematic and potentially harmful content (i.e., Brian de Palma himself admitting that his film Dressed to Kill is outdated in its ideas regarding transgender people).

Alice Maio Mackay is a breath of fresh air on the scene, continually growing in her craft and storytelling abilities. One of her strengths from the start is genuine portrayals of trans women and the LGBTQIA+ community as a whole, and Carnage for Christmas has that in spades.

Lola’s character encompasses the trope of the town outcast who has returned home but with a trans twist. This is Lola’s first time back home after her transition. She is met with varying amounts of warmth as well as hostility. Lola’s sister Danielle (Dominique Booth) embraces her, but Danielle’s roommate reeks of TERF macroaggressions and snipes at Lola.

From the jump, the dichotomy of safe spaces and acceptance is contrasted with exclusionist rhetoric and vitriol. Lola has to navigate all of this while attempting to solve a murder.

The holiday framing makes this all the more interesting because the holidays are a unique, nerve-racking pressure cooker for us all.

Everyone is home for the holidays, including your bullies, and in small towns, news travels fast. Mackay masters the literary idea of local color beautifully here because that atmosphere of small-town intolerance and bastions of acceptance rings true, even to this small-town Kentucky girl from America. You have the good and the bad, and you have it in spades.

Sometimes, people with ill intentions infiltrate safe spaces, intending to cause harm to others. The Toymaker, the spree killer purported to be the ghost from town legend, does just that. No one in the tight-knit group of LGBTQIA people is safe in the town, leading to much distress and confusion.

Mackay makes an essential statement in this film that deals with sexual fetishization of trans women in addition to her already knockout theming.

This addition bolsters just how unsafe it can be to be a trans woman in this day and age, when people are denigrating and sexualizing you from all sides and corners. It adds to the idea that one cannot be certain whether a space or a person is truly safe or if there is a facade at play. Anyone of a minority identity has experienced this. Still, it’s not typically discussed in relation to trans femmes in fiction narratives—and not usually in the bold, confrontational way that Mackay and Robinson do in Carnage for Christmas.

Fetishization strips a person of their autonomy and their personhood, reducing them to a sexual obsession instead of seeing them as a real person. This has real-world implications for trans women and is detrimental to their mental health.

Thankfully, studies are finally taking into account the detrimental side effects of fetishization when it comes to trans women.

One study from authors and researchers from psychology departments at the University of Milano—Bicocca, the University of Wisconsin, and Towson University takes a deep dive into the nature of fetishization in general, how it relates to trans and non-binary individuals, and the damaging impacts of fetishization.

Those with ye olde hometown issues a la Stephen King’s It, will relate to this one for sure because home is where the horror is and the childhood/teenage trauma that you cannot escape. Sometimes that’s in the form of a Santa suit-clad urban legend or a cosmic clown. The past and trauma catch up to you, and in the end, you have to make the choice to stand firm and face it for yourself and those around you.

Lola’s arc is strong in this aspect because not only is she an outcast due to her gender identity, but she was also etched into town lore against her own will, becoming a part of The Toymaker’s story long before the events of the film.

(Mackay details this part of the story with a wonderful monologue from Lola paired with vibrant animation.)

The film stirs up a plethora of old feelings for me personally, as someone who moved from their hometown and now lives elsewhere. I love my family and my friends, but the memories can be a bit much at times and make it difficult to visit from time to time.

Those threads run deep in the film, and it’s nice to see that from a perspective that isn’t just rooted in cisgendered protagonists.

There’s a sense of universality, but the film never lets us forget this is a trans story at the same time.

The non-linear nature of healing comes for us all when we least expect it, and there are times you don’t get to choose the trauma you parse through. It has a way of choosing us. Carnage for Christmas makes that point as Lola has to search her past and her present to solve the mystery and save the day.

Alice Maio Mackay is here to stay—and so is Benjamin Pahl Robinson—and with every new bold vision, they solidify themselves as necessary voices within horror.

We need blunt horror, confrontational horror that says fuck politeness politics and dancing around the hackneyed elephant in the room while still being full of heart and hope.

This duo achieves this time and time again with their transformative works that carve spaces for people who have lived their lives on the fringe of society.

This brand of horror has a sense of comfort amid all the gore and the serious topics. There’s a beauty in something that is made with such a keen eye for commentary and brutality, yet isn’t wholly jaded. It’s fresh, and it makes for great entertainment.

I know that I am a fan, and I cheer for every new Alice Maio Mackay movie announced. She embodies everything I love about women making scrappy indie horror.

Haters be damned; Mackay is here to stay, and so are the stories she creates.