I ended up watching more than 12 movies, but I liked the title, so what are you gonna do? Besides, sometimes I watched more than one per night. Maybe you will, too.
What’s so great about Christmas horror movies, anyway? I don’t hate Christmas—I’m no Scrooge!—but I do find the whole thing… a bit much. I don’t mind a little holiday cheer, but I think we Americans tend to overdo it a little bit.
I don’t greatly enjoy giving or receiving gifts (I don’t mind giving or receiving spontaneous gifts, but the whole process of making a list and checking it twice can be a bit tiresome). Back when I went to stores and places in public, hearing the same songs over and over got a bit irksome. I don’t really have a religious connection to Christmas or other December holidays, but I don’t begrudge others for it.
I love getting some time off at a quiet time of year. Peace and goodwill toward men (and women and everyone) sounds like a fine idea to me. Hyper-consumerism and feeling inadequate for not measuring up to impossible holiday standards, not so much. And of course there’s that age-old holiday tradition: family drama. Maybe Christmas horror is a way to deal with these ambivalent feelings about the season.
I think another appeal of Christmas horror for me is that the whole Christmas thing is just so overwhelmingly wholesome. Few things will have me putting some gory horror content on my Christmas list like watching White Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life, or—Satan save us—those infinite, insipid Hallmark movies. And spending more time at home in light of the horror of the pandemic (getting more horrible by the day where I live) has given me even more time to watch movies.
Whatever the reason, I’ve really gotten into the spirit of Christmas horror movies this year. Merry Christmas to all you ghouls, ghosts, elves, and malevolent mythological entities!
Slay Belles (2018) (Amazon)
Three friends with a YouTube channel break into an abandoned theme park called Santa Land where they encounter Krampus and then Santa and Mrs. Claus (who are under cover as biker types, Santa and Mrs. Klaus, that is. Krampus is just regular terrifying Krampus). Starring Barry Bostwick (of Rocky Horror fame) and Richard Moll (of Night Court fame). It’s exactly as silly as it sounds. At times the shaky camera style is off-putting (almost nauseating) and the plot meanders a bit, but overall it’s a fun, campy comedy/horror. And the Krampus suit actually looks pretty good.
Unholy Night (2018) (Amazon)
This Canadian Christmas horror anthology film has a frame story of a nurse working the night shift on Christmas eve. Then a mysterious patient tells her a few stories. A man meets his girlfriend’s family for the first time at Christmas and they have a strange tradition. Three women prepare for a night of drinking and discover a vengeful ghost who died from drinking too much. And then we return to the nurse, who turns out to have a disturbing past. Something about this made me think it must be Canadian about ten minutes in, maybe just because it all seemed so pleasantly un-Hollywood. I guess it also shows that Canadians aren’t always nice.
Christmas Presence (2018) (Shudder)
This British entry into the Christmas horror genre features a group of friends (a few of whom are likeable) staying at an English country manor, and of course creepiness and mayhem ensue. There’s a ghost, or—wait for it—a Christmas presence. And this presence presents itself differently to each character based on their fears (sure, Stephen King did this in IT, but it works well here, too). There are good scares and creepy ghost effects, not to mention an ending that puts a nice bow on the whole package.
Better Watch Out (2017) (Amazon, Shudder)
A babysitter and the kid she’s babysitting are home alone sometime before Christmas when things turn creepy. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say it’s even creepier than it looks and there’s at least one connection to Home Alone. You could enjoy this as a reasonably well-constructed horror movie, but maybe the most disturbing aspect of this movie is its depiction of the violence toxic masculinity does to boys and those around them.
Anna and the Apocalypse (2019) (Hulu)
A Christmas zombie apocalypse … musical? Sure, why not? The zombie comedy has a Shawn of the Dead feel (this is also a UK production), while the musical numbers sound like something out of a Disney show… until you pay attention to the lyrics, anyway. A lot of the humor comes from the juxtaposition of the gory zombie stuff and the up-beat musical numbers, but the movie ends up being a surprising meditation on the value of keeping hope alive in bleak circumstances. We could use a bit of that here at the end of 2020. And stick around for the animated end credits—something I always love!
A Creepshow Holiday Special (2020) (Shudder)
The newest entry on my list! I’ve been enjoying Shudder’s new Creepshow series, so I was pleased to see this holiday episode pop up recently. A man with mysterious medical problems visits a group called Shapeshifter’s Anonymous, which is exactly what it sounds like. But it also turns out that Santa Claus himself is somehow related to the shapeshifters. It’s fun to see something that doesn’t just happen to take place during Christmas, but that plays with Christmas lore, giving it a sinister twist. The practical creature effects make this one extra fun.
A Christmas Horror Story (2015) (Shudder)
This Canadian film stars everyone’s favorite Canadian Starfleet captain, William Shatner, as a radio host who provides the link between several interconnected stories: a family searches for a Christmas tree and finds something nefarious, another family meets Krampus in the woods, high school students investigate a murder that took place the previous Christmas, and Santa (who looks like he could be a vendor at the Renaissance Faire) fights zombies to save Christmas. The stories are intercut with one another rather than one after the other, so I’m not sure if this is technically an anthology film. Whatever it is, it’s one of the best films on this list in terms of production values and overall quality.
Santa Jaws (2018) (Amazon)
Santa Jaws is pretty much what you’d expect from a movie called Santa Jaws. A young comic book artist discovers that his latest creation has come to life, and it’s terrorizing his coastal Louisiana town. Lots of CGI shark kills ensue, along with practical shots of a shark fin with a Santa hat buzzing around the bayou. It’s not bad, or rather it is bad, but in a fun way. At least it’s not Jaws 4, the one where the shark follows them to the Bahamas at Christmas. As I was watching this, I thought it felt a lot like a Sharknado-era SyFy channel movie. I later discovered that it did in fact premiere on the SyFy channel in 2018. One mystery solved, although the mystery of why a shark wears a Santa hat on its fin may never be solved.
Christmas with Cookie: Locked Away (2017) (Amazon)
This is a sequel (of sorts) to Christmas with Cookie, which I watched and loved in the first batch of Christmas horror movies. Cookie the mutant elf is still living in a shack on the moon telling stories and eating Christmas cookies. This time he tells a zombie story that has nothing to do with Christmas, but at least he has some good MSK3K-style commentary on the film (Locked Away, which was originally released in 2007). Not quite as fun or Christmas-y as the first one, but Cookie gets some good jokes in there. Apparently Alex Maxson reprised his role as Cookie the mutant elf one more time. I’ll have to track that down next Christmas.
All the Creatures Were Stirring (2018) (Shudder)
I first saw this Christmas horror anthology film at the Chattanooga Film Festival in 2018 back in the Before Times when such things were in person… some of the filmmakers were even there in person for a Q&A… without masks if you can remember such things. I saw it was available on Shudder recently and thought I’d check it out again. Fun times! The frame narrative is a pair of friends attending a weird Christmas Eve play that consists of shorts titled after lines from The Night Before Christmas. An office gift exchange turns into something inspired by the Saw movies, a Christmas shopper finds himself stranded in a creepy parking lot, a modern day Scrooge is haunted by ghosts and his neighbor, a man hits a deer and experiences reindeer vengeance, and (my favorite starring Constance Wu) some friends gather for a Christmas celebration when things veer into a region somewhere near the Twilight Zone.
Rare Exports (2010) (Shudder, Hulu)
In Part One I said I wasn’t going to watch Rare Exports again, because I watched it a few years ago. Well, I changed my mind. What’s not to love about this wryly comical tale of unearthing the original Santa Claus in an archeological dig in northern Finland and the efforts of the scrappy locals—led by a ten-year-old boy—to keep the world safe from a monstrous Santa, while making a little money from unique Finnish exports? (Okay, I can think of one odd thing: are there no women in northern Finland?) My favorite Christmas horror movies don’t just take place during Christmas, but do interesting things with Christmas mythology. A Creepshow Holiday Special or A Christmas Horror Story do this, but Rare Exports is the cleverest and has the most heart of the lot. I might have to re-watch Krampus to be sure, but Rare Exports might be my favorite Christmas horror movie.
I watched a lot more Christmas horror movies this year than I thought I would, but I couldn’t get to all of them. Here are a few that were on my list, but I didn’t have time to check it twice. If you recommend any of these, or anything else (yes, I’ve seen Krampus and Gremlins), let me know!
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