The five freakiest Christmas movies
‘Tis the Christmas season, motherfuckers!!!
In case I was a little too subtle about it, I adore Christmas and always have done. Obviously, I can understand that it’s a pretty tough time for a number of people, and I’d never dream of arguing against that, but purely in my own experience, it’s a blast.
This is probably because my family keeps it as peaceful as we possibly can, and the idea of leaving the house on the 25th makes us all break out in hives. However, as a die-hard fan of horror stories, there’s a darker reason I love this time of year too.
That’s because mid-winter is the absolute perfect time of the year for horror. It’s dark at 4pm, it’s brutally cold, you’ve got the wind whistling through your flat at all points of the night, making noises like wailing ghosts just behind your bedroom door. Even with all the tinsel and mulled wine and presents, it can still be a spooky time of year, and that’s reflected in a fair few of the movies made to celebrate this time of year.
It’s true, not all Christmas movies are It’s a Wonderful Life, Home Alone and (thankfully) Love Actually. There are a fair few genuinely effective chillers to make the Christmas season palatable for the goths in our lives. So we’re going to rank them! Probably best to save these for your own Crimbo movie night unless you want to really traumatise your family after one too many screenings of The Muppets’ Christmas Carol.
Then again, that’s always part of the fun, isn’t it?
The five scariest Christmas movies:
‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’
I mean, come on, how could this not be on here? It’s a film that every year sparks the conversation, “Is The Nightmare Before Christmas a Christmas or Halloween film?”
A slightly overdone conversation when the answer is obvious to all and sundry who’ve actually seen Henry Selleck’s (not Tim Burton’s) holiday cult classic. It’s both. Duh. The one thing it’s not is particularly scary, which is why it finds itself at the bottom of this list.
At least, not to jaded fucks like us who shrugged our way through Hereditary, yawned our way through The Exorcist and chuckled our way through the franchise. However, Christmas is a time when all ages are together, and there are few more wonderful sights than the little ‘uns in our families discovering the joys of spooky stories for the very first time.
The Nightmare Before Christmas is tailor-made for that crowd with the surreal, spooky yet lovable inhabitants of Halloweentown.
‘Rare Exports’
Films about evil Santa Claus are dime-a-dozen.
You’ve got Silent Night, Deadly Night and Santa’s Slay, which are resolutely not appearing on this list. You’ve even got some pretty good ones like Krampus, which would probably be number six on this list. However, all of them fall short by having Kris Kringle as a guy in a red and white suit who has gone off the deep end spectacularly. Rare Exports goes much further by presenting Santa Claus as what he is at his core, which is basically a cryptid. A Kris cryptid, if you will.
This absolute blast of a Finnish action-horror-comedy might feel a little lighter on the scares than some would like, principally because of the wonderful line in workplace comedy about it to ground all the high-concept fun. However, when this creature feature gets going, it goes like the absolute clappers. Suddenly becoming a tinsel-wrapped version of The Thing but with even more beards. A lesser spotted holiday classic.
‘Gremlins’
Joe Dante’s classic satire was, fittingly enough, one of the peaks of a notorious batch of Hollywood blockbusters.
Gremlins, along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Poltergeist, forced Hollywood to create the PG-13 rating due to being too gosh-darn scary for a kids’ audience, yet also directly aimed at said kids’ audience. God knows that sometimes kids need the absolute bejeesus scared out of them, and the moment those fuzzy fucks get fed after midnight, that’s exactly what they do.
However, Gremlins is a lot more than just a kiddie creature feature. There’s a genuine love of Christmas in this film and thus, an equally genuine anger at the commercialism of the holiday season at its core. In true holiday fashion, this is a film that lets you have your cake and eat it too, with a little bit of everything that makes the Christmas season so special.
A bit of cynicism, a bit of joy, a bit of excitement and a whole lot of thrills.
‘Black Christmas’
Now we’re fucking talking.
Up until this point, this list has been filled with a certain kind of horror flick. One accessible to a braver kind of kid looking to combine their child-like love of Christmas with a slightly stronger brand of thrills than they’re used to. Black Christmas is absolutely not that kind of film.
Bob Clark’s 1974 proto-slasher classic is still an absolutely skin-crawling watch. A brutally tense, grotty little thriller that taps into absolutely none of the joys of the Christmas season. Being more about the pervasive threat misogyny presents to all women than anything to do with the holiday season.
That, combined with its voyeuristically shot scenes of a mysterious killer stalking a college sorority at Christmas time, makes this one emphatically for after the children have gone to bed. Even those who think they’re ready for something a little stronger might think twice at Black Christmas when they see the fate of Lynne Griffin’s character, Clare Harrison. One of the most dramatic stake-setting moments in the history of slasher movies.
‘Inside’
Even if you’re a seasoned horror buff, think very, very carefully about whether you want to ruin your Christmas season quite as spectacularly as Inside does.
This 2007 feature from Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo is no fun time at the pictures. There’s no black comedy here, no ironic, tinsel-covered bloody axes or creatures jumping from presents. This is a piece of New French Extremity, and it is a tough watch for anyone, no matter how many times they’ve watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as their comfort film.
Taking place on Christmas Eve, the film concerns Sarah Scarangella, a heavily pregnant mother-to-be still recovering from a car crash that, four months ago, claimed her husband’s life. Over the course of the night, Sarah realises she’s being stalked by another woman who will stop at nothing to take the baby for herself, whether it’s been born or not.
Trust me, the movie is even more grim than it sounds, holding nothing back in its genuinely shocking finale. Perhaps the Christmas season is the best time to throw this film on, after all, you’ll need some seriously strong sherries to recuperate afterwards.