Slapping some red and green lights around your set and dressing the killer up in a Santa hat is a great way to ensure your horror movie has some seasonal replay-factor every time Christmas rolls around. But which bone-chilling festive horror films are just nice, and which use their holiday setting to get disturbingly naughty?
Featuring some international and little-seen scarefests alongside beloved Hollywood Christmas classics, Eliza Janssen’s list will help bring some jolly terror down your chimney.
Black Christmas (1974) and (2019)
A sorority-set Christmas slasher so nice, they remade it twice. The 2006 version is pretty limp, but the original and fiercely feminist 2019 remake are both well worth your time. With its mysterious and ambiguous ending and some unforgettable kills, the 1974 film arguably kickstarted the slasher genre before Halloween, and it’s refreshing to see those same scares innovated upon in the empowering modern remake.
Christmas Evil (1980)
This is John Waters’ favourite Christmas movie, which should get you hyped already for some trashy tinsel-laden camp. Brandon Maggart puts in a deranged lead performance as a harangued toy factory worker who obsessively sees himself as Santa Claus, delivering divine justice to the nice and naughty folks of his grim town. The cinematography, twinkling with intense Christmas lights, makes all the kitschy carnage go down like smooth eggnog.
The Day of the Beast (1995)
This inventive Spanish black comedy takes the ‘Christ’ out of Christmas: our lead characters are a devout Basque priest, forced to commit evil acts to tempt the Antichrist into existence on Christmas Eve, and his helper, a Satanist metalhead keen to witness the infernal festivities. The demonic caper takes them to some invigorating Madrid locations—a violent punk gig, hanging off the side of a building’s neon-lit Schweppes ad—and of course the biblical predictions are carried out with a nasty bang.
Gremlins (1984)
The rare gnarly Christmas movie that the whole family can enjoy! Joe Dante’s jolly cartoon-come-to-life starts out treacly sweet, with the adorable exotic pet Gizmo finding a new home, and then ramps up into chaotic puppet madness once the titular mutant Mogwai take over. It’s never too intensely scary…until Phoebe Cates’ character explains why she doesn’t celebrate Christmas. The sequel’s brilliant too, but sadly not as Christmassy.
Inside (2007)
Viewers with not one fleck of Christmas spirit should check out one of our next few entries, starting with this gut-wrenchingly bleak story of motherhood and obsession. It’s set on Christmas Eve—you know, that Christian holiday all about a woman miraculously birthing an all-important baby—and concerns a sickening cat-and-mouse game between a pregnant woman and an intruder named only ‘La Femme’ in the credits. In a prime example of the New French Extremity movement, the stranger wants her baby, whether by natural delivery or something far darker.
The Lodge (2019)
Turn your heater waaaay up for this frosty and inhospitable thriller, another twisted tale of motherhood from Austria’s Goodnight Mommy directors. Riley Keough stars as a traumatised young woman trying—and very much failing—to bond with her new husband’s bitchy kids. When their winter holiday is seemingly haunted by the darkness in all of their pasts, your brain will raise and dismiss many different explanations: cult shenanigans, the kids’ late mum returning to torment them? A gas leak, or is the dysfunctional family in purgatory?
P2 (2007)
There’s plenty of sentimental Christmas movies about a workaholic learning the true reason for the season, but this merciless single-location thriller has them wising up to survival rather than the *magic of family and giving*. Directed by horror maestro Alexandre Aja, it’s certainly a formulaic tale, but wrings more than enough suspense out of its parking garage setting—and the retro Christmas tunes by Elvis and Eartha Kitt blaring over the car park’s loudspeaker add to the warped festive cheer.
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)
Do you believe in Joulupukki (the ancient Finnish source of myths surrounding Santa Claus)? You might, after being freaked out by this darkly deadpan fantasy. Its Santa is a gnarled, carnivorous beast, chewing reindeer down to the bone and leering at naughty kids: it’s up to motherless weird kid Pietari to get to the bottom of the old man’s discovery deep below the Finnish ice. The ending is wickedly clever.
Red Christmas (2016)
Iconic scream queen Dee Wallace dared to go Down Under for this 2016 gross-out horror, which tackles similar nasty Nativity subject matter to Inside (above). Ludicrously, it shows a nice normal family’s Christmas dinner invaded by a cloaked stranger who turns out to be the grown, hateful product of Wallace’s botched abortion 20 years ago. His name? Cletus the Foetus. If that sounds entirely too wack to you, the director’s making-of doco Horror Movie: A Low-Budget Nightmare might appeal more.
Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)
Okay, this is certainly not one of the best Christmas horrors ever made, but it works great as a hilarious drinking game, with at least one sublime moment of meme-worthy awfulness. Drink every time there’s a flashback to the original Silent Night Deadly Night, as this movie is literally just a slapdash clip show; drink every time there’s nudity on screen; drink every time the killer Santa chants the word “naughty” or “punish”; and throw in a sip when the film’s focus or aspect ratio is horribly off. You’ll be feeling merry in no time.
