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Between the twinkling lights and holiday cheer, Christmas can be a difficult time for queer and trans people, especially when returning to a hometown that isn’t always so accepting. Carnage for Christmas, the fifth feature from Australian filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay (who famously directed her first feature, 2021’s So Vam, at just sixteen years old), cleverly takes those painfully familiar tropes of small-town bigotry and adds lashings of camp and carnage to create an essential new entry in your annual festive watchlist.
The film follows trans true crime podcaster Lola (a magnetic Jeremy Moineau in her first leading role), who is drawn back to her hometown during the holiday season – a hometown she left behind years before transitioning. The rumored return of a mythologized killer known as The Toymaker is too much for sleuthing Lola to resist, and with the queer community at risk, it’s up to her to figure out the mystery of who – or what – dwells behind the Santa mask.
FANGORIA spoke with Mackay ahead of Carnage for Christmas’ European premiere at London’s FrightFest later this month.
Alice, you’ve created a Christmas classic for the ages. That techno remix of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy will stay with me forever. First and foremost: why Christmas?
Alice Maio Mackay: It was initially a narrative decision, because I needed a reason for this character to go back to her hometown after all those years, and everything that happened to her. Why else would you want to go back to your conservative hometown? Tying it to the holidays made perfect sense.
Let’s talk about your inspirations for such a seasonal story – were any of the classic holiday-themed slashers (Black Christmas, Valentine, April Fool’s Day, the recent It’s a Wonderful Knife etc) on your watchlist?
I love Black Christmas, all three versions. But, while Carnage for Christmas definitely has those gory and grotesque slasher moments, my inspirations were more Columbo, Pamela Sue Martin’s Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Murder, She Wrote and stuff like that. What would a version of Murder, She Wrote look like through a trans perspective?
Well, you certainly nailed that. Can we please get another ten movies with Lola going around Nancy Drew-ing the cases and solving crimes?
I would make ten of those in a heartbeat.
This world you’ve created, with Lola, the Toy Maker killer and this small town swirling with rumors and gossip, it all feels so fully realized, cohesive and lived-in. How long has Carnage for Christmas been living in your mind?
We shot the film in August of last year and started writing at the beginning of that year [Carnage for Christmas is co-written by Mackay and Benjamin Pahl Robinson]. In terms of performances and characters, Carnage for Christmas is still campy in a similar vein to my other work, but I wanted the film to be very melodramatic – not necessarily over the top, but I wanted to give melodrama to each character’s backstory, almost like the world of soap opera where all the characters have their own backstories and they’re all intertwined.
Carnage for Christmas’ gloriously frenetic editing was provided by the one and only Vera Drew of The People’s Joker fame. How did she end up coming on to the project?
We DMed a little bit last year, and then we met in person at a party and went on to do a film scene together. From there, we became closer as friends, and I reached out to her while we were shooting. She was still working on The People’s Joker at the time, but she really loved the script and was keen to jump on board. I wouldn’t have it any other way. With my other films, it’s what I always envisioned from script to filming, and is very much a linear process. But with Carnage for Christmas, having her on board and working with a separate DP, we would give her the footage and I told her to ramp up the melodrama. I was able to watch her put the film through her own lens under my direction, and I got to watch it evolve.
With Carnage For Christmas, it really feels like you’ve honed in on what made your previous films work so well and finessed it all in one package. Do you like to take elements from each project into the next, or do you prefer to tackle each piece as a fresh slate?
It’s mostly a freshly clean slate. With every film I make, I’m really just doing something that I want to see, and hopefully I’ve conveyed that each time. I started filmmaking when I was 16, so obviously there are things I would change and do differently from the first one. But working with similar people and the same team, we’re able to get a singular vision of what we want and hopefully doing it better each time, in a more cohesive way.
Speaking of that same team – in front of the camera of Carnage for Christmas there are some familiar faces from the Alice Maio Mackay universe…
Getting the cast I’ve worked with before to play different roles is always really exciting for me. In this film, we had Iris [Mcerlean], who in So Vam played a nonbinary queer vampire, and in this film they’re playing a construction worker who beats up a guy at a party. It’s fun giving those actors different challenges.
FANGORIA had the privilege of debuting some exclusive, very grisly, stills for Carnage for Christmas, and gorehounds will be very happy to know that the film doesn’t hold back on the practical effects. How did that nastiness come together behind the scenes?
That’s Adele [Shearwin], who’s done my other two films and has worked on Firebite for AMC and Talk to Me. I had no idea how we were going to pull it off when Ben and I wrote the script, but Adele did something that was really incredible. And shout out to Molly [Ferguson], because being bent in that angle was really uncomfortable. As I said, because Carnage for Christmas is mostly a mystery, melodrama kind of film, I wanted the gore to hit hard and be full-on. If it’s going to be a sparse and relatively non-violent film, when there is a body, it needs to be 100% disgusting.
Since the genre’s inception, horror has always been queer, but we’ve seen a recent and hugely necessary renaissance of trans creatives both behind and in front of the camera in genre cinema. Filmmakers like yourself, Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), Louise Weard (Computer Hearts, Castration Movie) and the aforementioned Vera Drew, as well as actors in pivotal roles like Talk to Me’s Zoe Terakes, Evil Dead Rise’s Morgan Davies and of course Cuckoo‘s Hunter Schafer. How does it feel to be at the forefront of such a revolutionary moment?
It definitely feels like I’m not consciously trying to be part of a movement or wave of trans horror, but obviously, it’s very humbling and nice to be included. To be featured in books on trans horror (like Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Maclay’s Corpses, Fools and Monsters) alongside artists like Vera or Jane means the world to me, and I’m insanely grateful for those responses and reactions. It’s not something I consciously think about. I’m trans, I’m gonna write what I write, and people respond to it in a number of lovely ways.
Your filmography so far is such a glorious mixed bag of subgenres. You’ve explored the worlds of vampires with So Vam, black magic masks in Bad Girl Boogey, demonic cults with Satranic Panic and alien parasites in T Blockers. What do you plan to tackle next?
There are two things I’m doing for sure. Vera and I are producing a film together written by Cassie Hamilton, star of Satranic Panic. It’s like a weird, animated comedy. It’s actually a bit of a romcom, it’s insane, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like my work on meth. The other film is a romance in the world of horror… it’s completely different from anything I’ve ever done before.
