Carnage for Christmas and Liminal (Salem Horror Fest 2024)(Review)

As both a transgender woman and an enthusiast in horror, folklore, and all things spooky and fortean, I find myself frequently considering the relationships that people have with places; with horror, I frequently consider the ways in which locations can be haunted (literally or figuratively) by the actions of people within them, but beyond that as a queer person I also frequently consider the nature of “safe” and “unsafe” spaces, and the ways in which people and communities can be linked to physical settings.

The very existence of Salem Horror Fest is proof that I’m not alone in my thoughts, given that festival director Kay Lynch founded SHF as a direct response to the climate of political fearmongering and hatred that was brought to its boiling point in the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The explicit aim of Salem Horror Fest has always been to provide a safe space for horror fans from vulnerable minority groups, in particular the LGBTQ+ community, to come together and celebrate their love for the genre. Even the city that plays host to the festival feels relevant to discussing its relationship with horror and place – historically, Salem was the setting of the infamous 1692-93 witch trials, a campaign of superstitious colonial and patriarchal greed which directly resulted in the killing of (at least) 25 innocent people, the vast majority of whom were women. In spite of having never actually visited Salem (though I would absolutely love to attend the fest in-person in future), it nonetheless bugs me a little whenever I hear mention of the crowds of tourists who flock to the city for Hallowe’en, knowing its association with ghosts and witches is rooted in the shadow of the gallows; in many ways, this is what makes Salem Horror Fest so cool – it’s a conscious reclamation of the city’s haunts and horrors, platforming fictional scares whilst fighting against and openly defying the real-world terrors that gave Salem its reputation.

This year’s Salem Horror Fest features not just one, but TWO feature films centered around transgender identity, senses of place, and the ways in which the ghosts of a dark past linger – both from opposite ends of the globe, yet both connected by strands of synchronicity that, when paired together, paint an interesting picture of the recurring themes and anxieties in modern trans horror.

Premiering in the U.S. during a month when snow could plausibly be falling in Australia, Carnage for Christmas (2024) is the fifth(!!!) and latest feature from prolific young filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay – who, if you’re a regular visitor to The Geek Show, was responsible for the slimy queer punk knockout that was last year’s T-Blockers (2023). Carnage for Christmas follows Lola (Jeremy Moineau), a transgender true-crime podcaster who reluctantly decides to come home for the holidays, returning to her chilly, politically conservative hometown, Purdan, for the first time since she came out. Unfortunately, Purdan is also home to “The Toymaker”, a ghostly seasonal slayer of legend – think Cropsey by way of Silent Night’s masked serial-killing Santa – which Lola has a personal connection to, having unwittingly uncovered the remains of his “final” victim back when she was a closeted teenager. As Lola attempts to have an enjoyable Christmas with her sister, Danielle (Dominique Booth), in spite of some hostility from old high-school bullies and bigoted locals, a slash-happy Saint Nick starts picking off townsfolk in a variety of gruesome ways, in keeping with the Toymaker legend; when the cops refuse to put any effort into investigating the killings, and a history of criminal cover-ups in Purdan comes to light, it’s up to Lola to put her sleuthing skills to the test and stop the murderer before more poor souls receive a gift far worse than coal in their stocking.

Carnage for Christmas hits hardest when it delves into the human drama of Lola’s homecoming, and the twisted nostalgia of her returning to a place she once called “home”, but one she could never truly be herself in, and one which was always vaguely unwelcoming; the film’s greatest showcase of this is also its best sequence, an animated sepia-tone flashback in which a teenage Lola participates in a Halloween dare to enter the supposedly haunted “Toymaker House”, which is a thing of striking beauty. Beyond that, the flashes of practical gore that show up throughout the film are a carpenter’s dream – the methods by which the Toymaker uses his woodworking skills on his victims are grotesquely inventive, not least when we get a glimpse of a particularly nasty “Christmas angel” that I can’t help but applaud Mackay and her team for. This isn’t exactly your conventional Christmas slasher, though, with every strike and stab in the snow cracking open the very film itself, thanks to The People’s Joker (2024) director Vera Drew’s experimental edit; Drew’s involvement brings a distinctly different flavour to the film than what some will have grown to expect from Alice’s previous pictures, and Carnage for Christmas’s unconventional editing style is likely to divide audiences – it’s certainly of an acquired taste, and one which I think is extremely variable in its effect throughout the film, but when it hits… it hits like a hammer blow.

Unfortunately, Carnage for Christmas might be Mackay’s weakest film so far, particularly as the follow-up to such potent, powerful festival hits as Satranic Panic (2023) and especially T-Blockers. That isn’t to say that it’s not worth supporting or checking out, because my hope is always for people to support genre film from trans creatives (particularly ones as insanely talented as Alice Maio Mackay), and it does have its highlights, but it doesn’t really come together as a fully-formed narrative like her previous films have, and its central plot is resolved in a rather unfulfilling manner; Carnage for Christmas is only just over an hour long, but I think it needed to run for at least half an hour longer in order for its mystery to satisfyingly pay off.

I also feel that the film’s comic beats work to its disadvantage – not that they aren’t funny, but I don’t think the film’s camp elements are integrated particularly well with its serious “returning to a hometown full of teen trauma and violent hate crimes” plot and themes; though the movie’s unexpectedly silly and vulgar climax could have easily paid off in a film which blended its humour and horror more naturally, all it does here is deflate the film’s element of sincere, heartfelt drama that has been set up throughout. To be fair, though – have you ever tried to make five feature films in the span of three years before you’re 19? They can’t all be bangers, I suppose – but nonetheless, Alice made another film and got it out there in this current climate of anti-trans fearmongering and scapegoating, and that, in itself, makes Carnage for Christmas a success in my eyes. It’s her weakest so far, but it’s weak by the standards of a great young filmmaker who’s doing it like nobody else is – and I’m never not going to recommend people watch a new Alice Maio Mackay picture.

Taking a step a little closer to home (for me, at least), and a big step back into our own reality, director Andrew Hawkes’s Liminal (2024) is arguably an even more explicit examination of the relationships between queerness, location, and of course the unexplained. Hawkes’s debut documentary feature follows non-binary paranormal investigator Dash Kwiatkowski as they explore queer identity in the worlds of spiritualism, the occult, and ghost-hunting, all the while carrying out their own investigation with teammates Rosa Escandón and Rockette Fox into the notorious Tennessee legend of the Bell Witch. Kwiatkowski posits the theory that the supernatural is as much tied to liminal identities as it is to the idea of “liminal spaces” – in-between places, such as schools, train stations and hospitals – with Dash suggesting the fascinating idea that the “liminality” of trans identity is the reason why gender-diverse people from indigenous cultures throughout history have been regarded as mystics and sages.

Right off the bat, it’s clear that Liminal is intended to be the feature-length pilot episode of a trans-led ghost-hunting TV series, moreso than it is a complete stand-alone documentary. Hawkes’s film (which is arguably just as much Kwiatkowski’s) is at its best when it directly delves into the lives of Tennessee’s LGBTQ+ community, and the relationships that queer people have with spirituality, the supernatural, and the ways in which their surroundings (and the legends within them) have helped shape their identities; when it’s delving into the psychogeography of American queerness, Liminal is an endearing and informative time.

Liminal is very obviously targeted towards an audience that already believes rather than the simply curious, let alone the skeptic. It also, for all the promise of its queer-centric lead-in, doesn’t particularly break any new ground in the world of paranormal investigation – this is basically your straightforward, standard ghost-hunting show, just with a more diverse cast, and even then it doesn’t have the intrigue or entertainment value of something like Watcher’s Ghost Files (2022-).

This is decidedly “a paranormal investigation show with queer people in the leads”, rather than “a show about paranormal investigation through the lens of queer identity and history”, which is a shame, given how much promise its idea of “liminal identities” and cultural connections between queerness and the supernatural has. It’s even arguable that the most interesting points to be made about alleged hauntings in the U.S. here aren’t even noticed by our lead team of ghost hunters – sure, ideas of misogyny and the connotations of “witchcraft” are discussed, but at the same time, I can’t help but feel like Rockette Fox seeing the spirit of a young girl with an unwanted pregnancy has greater cultural connotations, particularly in regards to the current state of the nation, that are essentially brushed over in favour of further standard ghost-hunting hijinks. That being said, I can easily see how the concept for Liminal might work out better if it were a long-format series – so let’s get that show greenlit!

There’s one other thing about the connections between transgender identity, horror and place which I feel is relevant to my thoughts here. Though I’m reviewing from the U.K., Salem Horror Fest is a U.S.-based festival, and one far more overtly trans-inclusive than most; watching through Carnage for Christmas, and especially Liminal, I do wonder if either of these films will ever make it over to the U.K., particularly due to their prominent transgender content and creators. At the time of writing, Jane Schoenbrun’s A24-backed I Saw the TV Glow (2024) still hasn’t managed to secure U.K. distribution in spite of it playing to a wide theatrical release across the pond, making it the latest in a long line of titles that includes Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo (2024) and the aforementioned People’s Joker; even openly trans titles that did manage to make it over here, such as Knife+Heart (2018) and T-Blockers, only managed to be booked for the occasional festival screening before disappearing into the distribution ether. At this current moment in time, it’s practically harder than ever to get trans cinema, especially trans horror cinema, distributed internationally – and I fear, given the state of this country, that things could get even worse.

It doesn’t even matter if I had issues with Carnage for Christmas or Liminal, because at the end of the day, they’re examples of bold, personal transgender cinema that inherently deserve to be seen because of that fact. Hell, they’ve both got elements which they deserve large amounts of praise for, for all their flaws – and for the sake of us all, they should be celebrated. So, regardless of my thoughts, at the very least I hope U.K. readers will be able to sit down and watch both these films in the near future – because indie trans filmmakers deserve to have their work seen.

Robyn’s Archive – Liminal & Carnage for Christmas