I got so excited when I found out there's finally a Mummers horror movie! Unfortunately, Guess Who feels like a very flawed product of compromise, ultimately pleasing no one. The movie opens with a definition of Mummering, "a centuries old Christmas tradition, in which people disguise their identities, visit neighbors, and tell a riddle. The host tries to solve the riddle, and guess the identity of the mummer. One never knows who is under the mask." And that's a part of Mummering, sure. Nowhere in the description or promo for Guess Who is this movie described as a Mummers horror, yet the movie is very much centred completely around Mummering.
Guess Who is very, very banal, a generic PG slasher. The movie's misuse of Mummering was a missed opportunity to explore an interesting tradition with rich Pagan/folk roots. With the confines of that PG rating it would have been far more effective and scary if it was folk horror and/or supernatural. Instead, we get a forgettable, bland stinker slasher made egregious by its lost potential and appropriation of a Newfoundland and Labrador cultural tradition (without ever actually mentioning Newfoundland and Labrador). Though right from the opening minutes, The Mummer costumes are great and accurate (apart from the central Mummer who is in plain, drab masked slasher attire) and specific to the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador: the brightly colored doilies and linens, false faces, and bras worn overtop of clothing. But then we see proud displays of American flags????? So, we're not Mummering in Newfoundland and Labrador??? The movie quickly becomes an undisclosed American town, using the overcompensating American flag waving short-hand of so many movies filmed in Canada. I am so tired of seeing movies that are obviously in Canada yet becomes somewhere else, USA. Sure, it was funny when Jason attacked people on Vancouver's Skytrain in Jason Takes Manhattan but let's put this to rest. This has the added crime of wanting to take place in Newfoundland and Labrador (misusing its specific Mummering folk traditions, note that Philadelphia is the only U. S. city with Mummering and it is very different and more ostentatious there), but filmed by Canadians in Montreal (though nondescript enough to not make it look Montreal specific) while taking place in an unnamed American town and using lots of Canadian funding. Oh, and as of this writing, it's only available to viewers in the USA, on Tubi. I love Tubi but this is the first Tubi Original that I've seen. Guess Who could have taken full advantage of Newfoundland and Labrador's dramatic landscape: the crashing waves of The Atlantic Ocean upon the rocks surrounded by fog and snow. The Mom character in Guess Who even makes a Jigs dinner, a traditional Newfoundland meal, for everyone. The actor playing that character makes a dreadful attempt at a Newfoundland accent: was noted Newfoundland actor Mary Walsh not available? She probably didn't want to do this. Looking up the writers of Guess Who, it turns out that they'd previously done a remake of the Canadian horror movie Terror Train (also a Tubi original) and their remake actually starred Mary Walsh! This makes me wonder if Guess Who was more accurate in its early script drafts and actually took place in Newfoundland (as opposed to 'Canadian city filling in for unnamed American town') and if they wrote that part for Mary Walsh until the U. S. suits stepped in.
This movie's Mummers do go to houses but instead of having people ask questions to try and guess their identities, they borrow more freely from the Batman tradition and pretend that they're The Riddler asking questions like "What has teeth but doesn't eat?" (a comb) Mummering in Newfoundland and Labrador is very much a community event where people who haven't much money can participate, it's downright subversive and socialist, even thumbing its nose at the wealthy. In this movie, the only sympathetic characters are the rich people.
For a movie called Guess Who that was filmed in Canada by Canadians, it should have been the true story of the fake band pretending to be the Canadian classic rock band The Guess Who.
Much like 2015's Krampus, a horror comedy movie that is neither funny nor scary, Guess Who gets the tradition so wrong to the detriment of everything (I highly recommend the "Krampus And The Old Dark, Christmas" history book). If Guess Who had just removed the Mummers then it'd be just a generic PG slasher but instead it's a generic PG slasher full of inaccuracies and missed opportunities and evil intent. I hope one day someone makes a good Mummers folk horror movie.
I highly recommend Dale Jarvis' book on the history of Mummering in Newfoundland and Labrador. In terms of folk-horror that is Mummers adjacent, there is an incredible National Film Board short from 2021 about a Labrador Inuit tradition called Nalujuk Night directed by Jennie Williams. Nalujuk Night is a verite documentary that is effectively scary, accurate, and fun! Real life folk horror that borders on the supernatural.
