Scary Christmas: 13 Holiday Horror Movies

While Christmas is typically the time to snuggle up with friends and family to watch the same corny, nostalgic favorites we return to every year, for filmmakers the holiday season is a surprisingly fertile ground for a very different form of entertainment: horror films. There are literally dozens of Christmas horror films currently in existence, and seemingly more every year. They use the Christmas festivities as a counterpoint for the bloody work of serial killers, monsters, or legendary figures from folklore.

If you’re looking for a thrilling alternative to the feel-good Christmas canon, below find 13 holiday films that exchange season’s greetings for season’s beatings, and fill your cup with good fear. It should go without saying that most of these films are not appropriate for families! So keep these off your TV until the little ones are all tucked snug in their beds.

I discuss many of these movies, and more titles, in the Great Pop Culture Debate podcast episode devoted to the Best Holiday Horror Film:

The original Black Christmas, released in 1974, isn’t just one of the first Christmas horror movies; it is among the first slasher films ever released. It is incredibly influential on the horror genre, and was credited by John Carpenter as an inspiration for another holiday-related serial-killer film, Halloween. The set up is simple, effective, and disturbing: a group of college sorority sisters are stalked by a stranger over holiday break. And that ending! We won’t spoil it for you. The film has been remade twice, in 2006 and 2019, but we recommend sticking with the original. Look for some familiar faces, including Olivia Hussey (Romeo and Juliet), Margot Kidder (Superman), and Andrea Martin (My Big Fat Greek Wedding).

A decade after Black Christmas we got another holiday slasher, and this one was even more controversial. The original Silent Night, Deadly Night was released in 1984, and only played in theaters for one weekend. There was such a public outcry around the movie and its marketing that it was pulled out of cinemas almost instantly, and in the process, became a cult classic. This movie follows young Billy, who witnesses his parents’ murder by a carjacker dressed as Santa. Billy and his younger brother are sent to live in a Catholic orphanage, where he is further traumatized by the abusive nuns. After suffering even more cruelty as an adult, Billy snaps when he is forced to dress up as a store Santa, and sets off on a murderous rampage against those he deems “naughty.” A remake by the team behind Terrifier is now playing in movie theaters, but the original has its charms.

This 2010 film from Finland is a change of pace, focusing more on the mythological horrors of the season, and the greedy nature of men. A group of explorers begin examining an ancient burial ground in the Eastern European wilderness, and are soon dragged into a wild scenario that questions the origins of familiar Christmas stories, and the power of belief.

For the overly squeamish still looking to satisfy their dark side, this British black comedy from 2020 brings a taste of horror but with significantly less gore. Keira Knightly and Matthew Goode play a charming British couple welcoming family and friends to a lovely Christmas celebration, trying to make the most of their lives before an impending apocalypse ends it all.

David Harbour (Hopper from Stranger Things) plays an exhausted and jaded Santa Claus whose Christmas Eve run is disrupted by a young girl whose billionaire family has been taken hostage by a greedy terrorist (John Leguizamo, chewing every inch of scenery) and his Christmas-codenamed goons. It’s Die Hard (which is a Christmas movie) starring the actual Santa Claus and referencing extreme economic disparity. Timely! This is more an action film than a horror movie, but it does get quite gruesome, and features lots of cursing. A sequel is in the works for next Christmas.

One of the buzziest horror franchises currently releasing films, the Terrifier series by Damian Leone is not for horror beginners. These films are truly dark and disturbing, with shocking amounts of violence and gore, and an almost giddy nihilism that may make them a tough watch. The third installment, released in 2024, is set at Christmas, with malevolent entity Art the Clown stalking the previous film’s Final Girl during the most wonderful time of the year.

There’s nothing supernatural about this 2017 horror film, but it’s still one of the more disturbing movies on this list. A teen babysitter must protect her young charges from home invaders, but all is not as it seems. The film bridges Home Alone with Saw and Netflix’s You, which is a sentence that has never been written before.

Joe Dante’s 1984 film is quite literally the reason we now have the PG-13 rating. Believe it or not, Gremlins is rated PG. Any 80s kid would find that shocking, as the film is violent, chaotic, and at parts, quite scary. But everything was terrifying in the 1980s! A traveling salesman buys his young adult son a mysterious, exotic pet that comes with three specific rules that must be obeyed…and which are almost instantly broken. You might not think of Gremlins as a Christmas film, but it is not only set during the season, it is predicated on gift giving gone bad, and gives us Phoebe Cates’ iconic Santa Claus story. It’s more Christmas than Die Hard!

Is it a Christmas movie? A Halloween movie? I would argue that it is both. Tim Burton wrote and produced this 1993 classic. Henry Selick directed the painstaking stop-animation process, which remains impressive 30-plus years after its release. It’s a creepy, thrilling ride as Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloweentown, decides to try something new by taking over Santa Claus’s Christmas Eve delivery service. Hijinks, and some wonderful songs, ensue. This is one of the only family-friendly selections on this list, and even then, it’s not for very little ones.

Not to be confused with the same-named Michael Keaton movie released a year later, 1997’s Jack Frost is a B-movie about a serial killer who gets genetically bonded to a snow drift, turning him into a killer snowman. Listen, these things happen. The evil snowman then goes about terrorizing a small town, killing its denizens in horrible, winter-related attacks. That includes a pre-American Pie Shannon Elizabeth in her first significant film role (I’ll warn you, her scene is disturbing). If you visited Blockbuster Video in the 1990s, I guarantee you saw this movie’s lenticular cover, with an image that changed depending on how you looked at it. A sequel would release in 2000.

In the 2010s, the holiday season got a new — to the United States, anyway — folkloric fixation in the form of Krampus. Essentially an anti-Santa from Eastern European legend, Krampus was a demon who would also visit children during the Christmas season, but instead of giving presents and treats to good kids, Krampus would instead find bad children and beat them with sticks, or stuff them in a basket and drag them to hell. Within a few years of Krampus becoming a pop-culture icon, Legendary Pictures released a movie inspired by the legend in 2015. While the film Krampus polarized audiences, it’s worth a watch, and includes legit stars like Adam Scott (Severance, Parks & Recreation) and Toni Collette (Hereditary, Muriel’s Wedding).

This 2023 indie horror puts a clever spin on Frank Capra’s 1946 Christmas weeper, It’s a Wonderful Life. A young woman who saved her small town from a serial killer wishes that she had never been born, and finds herself in an alternate reality where she never existed. Surprise! It’s actually worse for everyone, as the masked killer — dubbed The Angel — .goes on to kill even more innocent people. Look for Joel McHale and Justin Long in supporting roles.

The highest of high-concept movies, this is a Christmas film about a zombie apocalypse that is ALSO a musical. Anna and the Apocalypse was released in 2018, and has developed a cult following inspired by its completely gonzo approach. This is a film that really goes for it — it is ambitious, it is darkly funny, it is grisly, and it is also sometimes deeply sad. But if you’re looking for something different this holiday season, it doesn’t get much more different than this.