Ready or not, this list will help you make your next spooky and festive streaming selection at home over holiday season 2022. We’ve included bona fide genre classics like Black Christmas and Gremlins, and it’s likely you’ve never heard of some of these films. This movies will freak you out as much as they’ll get you in the Christmas spirit. All of these titles are readily available on all major streaming services for rental or purchase.
Best Christmas horror movies
Black Christmas (1974)
Bob Clark‘s decidedly darker Christmas movie (he also made perennial family-friendly favorite A Christmas Story) is a gnarly little thriller about a group of sorority sisters who are stalked and preyed upon by a psycho-killer who remains anonymous and is never caught (not common in this subgenre). The film was a box-office success, thanks in part to its brilliant tagline: “If this movie doesn’t make your skin crawl, it’s on too tight!” In order to get approved for its first-run release, British censors edited the picture a bit, though not for violence; the obscene phone calls the girls receive were deemed too vulgar for theaters. The ick factor is really high in this one, even by today’s standards. Warner Bros. Elvis Presley considered Black Christmas one of his all-time favorite films, as does Steve Martin. Just please be sure to check out the 1974 original and not the 2006 remake, a geeky splatterfest that retains none of the mystery, cleverness and menace of the original. Even worse is the 2019 remake, which halfheartedly and lazily attempts to turn Black Christmas into a tale of female empowerment.
Gremlins (1984)
Quick: is Joe Dante‘s handcrafted masterpiece of mayhem a horror movie for Halloween, or is it a Christmas movie? Gremlins is so deliciously inventive, so funny, and yes–so frightening, who could blame you for watching it at least twice a year? The PG-rated Gremlins was aimed at a wide audience, and raked in a hefty $153 million against an $11 million budget. The unexpectedly high gore quotient (that microwave scene, anyone?) angered some parents, as did the bloodletting in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that same summer. By the release of Red Dawn in August, the MPAA instated the PG-13 rating we still have today Roger Ebert said Gremlins “is a confrontation between Norman Rockwell’s vision of Christmas and Hollywood’s vision of the blood-sucking monkeys of voodoo island. It’s fun.”
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Like fellow holiday classic Gremlins, this red-blooded Halloween-Christmas mashup is one of the scariest movies ever aimed—ostensibly—at children. The Tim Burton-produced stop-motion musical has grown so iconic and popular that it’s become its own brand, but it’s important to remember just how special the film is on its own merits. The Danny Elfman songs haunt, and the German Expressionism-inspired visuals are breathtaking. Film critic Roger Ebert even compared the picture to Star Wars. Touchstone Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
A Christmas Carol aka Scrooge (1951)
Of the countless adaptations of Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella A Christmas Carol to hit the screen, this one (titled Scrooge in the U.S. is the best, and one of the most essential. Dramatic, funny and indeed frightening, the picture hinges on a mighty, complex performance by Alastair Sim as Scrooge. Lesser adaptations lose the gravity of Dickens’ ghost story, about a man fighting for his soul. This is a classic that falls into horror among other genres. Renown Pictures
Krampus (2015)
Thanks to a deft balance of humor and scares, an overqualified cast (including Adam Scott, Toni Collette and David Koechner), and some excellent creature and sound design, director Michael Dougherty’s Krampus hits all the right notes. It’s set in modern suburbia, and tells of the titular ancient European folk beast’s takeover of a dysfunctional family’s holiday. PG-13-rated Krampus is a successful balancing act; it’s just scary enough to satisfy horror fans, but never graphic, fairly family-friendly. It’s spooky, and there’s tangible joy in the filmmaking. Dougherty helmed 2019’s underrated Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)
Critically acclaimed for slick genre bending and technical skill, this Finnish action horror fantasy comedy is about a terrifying Santa Claus, and locals discovering a dark vision of his home in Korvatunturi. In a highly positive review, Roger Ebert called Rare Exports “a rather brilliant lump of coal for your stocking” and compared it to The Thing.
Inside (2007)
A key film of the French New Wave of Horror from the turn of the century, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo‘s ultraviolent, even clinically gory thriller tells of a home invasion and a pregnancy. Other notable pictures of this movement include High Tension, Raw and Them. This is the hard stuff, definitely not popcorn horror you watch for a good time.
Anna and the Apocalypse (2018)
Anna and the Apocalypse is a Scottish Christmas zombie musical coming-of-age teen comedy/drama. On paper, this looks like it shouldn’t work, but it mostly does—and thanks to the eclectic mashup of genres, this seems destined to become a seasonal cult classic. The quirky picture actually has a tragic real-life backstory: it’s based on the 2010 BAFTA-winning short film Zombie Musical by Ryan McHenry, who died of cancer in 2015 at age 27. McHenry has a co-writing credit on the feature, directed by John McPhail.
Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
Post-Halloween (1978), there was a gold rush of trashy holiday-turned-slasher movies that couldn’t hold a candle to John Carpenter’s inspired scary classic. TriStar-released Silent Night, Deadly Night, directed by Charles E. Sellier Jr., is perhaps the most infamous. Public response to the R-rated gore fest’s advertising campaign—prominently featuring a killer Santa–was overwhelmingly negative. The film received a critical lashing, and was pulled from theaters after only one (admittedly, lucrative) week. It quickly developed a considerable cult following. To be clear: Silent Night, Deadly Night is garbage. But it’s a sleazy good time for the target audience. There’s a pulpy charm to it.
Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)
1987’s Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is the laziest entry in the franchise; a significant chunk is a “greatest hits”-like recap of chapter one. Then we finally are delivered to a campy story centered on the original film’s killer’s brother. Part 2 is best known on the internet for one of the most infamous line readings EVER. Watch below.
Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! (1989)
Released near the end of the ’80s slasher craze (and clearly heavily inspired by the Friday the 13th films) Silent Night, Deadly Night 3 is about a scientist who links the minds of a psychic blind girl and a comatose killer. This is the last film to follow the saga begun in part one; the remaining entries are unrelated standalone stories.
Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation (1990)
Brian Yuzna’s fourth installment in the slasher series takes a serious pivot—to a story about witches and supernatural bugs. Gory and strange, Initiation benefits greatly from deliciously campy performances from Clint Howard and Swedish beauty Maud Adams (that’s right—Octopussy herself).
Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker
In an ironic, undeniably amusing bit of casting, silver screen legend Mickey Rooney stars in the fifth entry, as a shopkeeper holding deadly secrets. Rooney had famously spoken out against the 1984 original picture, taking offense (as many did) to the juxtaposing of a religious holiday and sleazy subject matter. With a well-regarded shock ending, The Toy Maker is now a cult classic.
Jack Frost (1997)
The first film of Shannon Elizabeth (she’s at the center of the film’s most infamous scene), this low A sequel, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman, followed in 2000. Popular YouTube reviewer James A. Janisse says pretty much everything that needs to be said about the original, critically reviled cult film in a review from his “Dead Meat” kill count series.
Santa’s Slay (2015)
Co-produced by Rush Hour’s Brett Ratner, this Canadian-American supernatural slasher stars Bill Goldberg as Santa, who takes break from centuries of goodwill to spread Christmas fear. Written and directed by David Steiman, Ratner’s former assistant.
Christmas Evil aka You Better Watch Out (1980)
A knowingly lurid—the key word here being “knowingly”— B-movie chiller is like a grindhouse Taxi Driver in a Santa hat. A favorite of John Waters (it’s easy to see why), Lewis Jackson’s darkly comic exploitation film is about a troubled toymaker who cracks and goes on a yuletide murder spree.
The Lodge (2020)
Co-directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala follow their disturbing, acclaimed German-language festival hit debut Goodnight Mommy with The Lodge, an equally unsettling, impressively economic descent into madness. Front and center is a scorching performance from Riley Keough.
The Retaliators (2021)
Directed by Bridget Smith and Samuel Gonzalez Jr., The Retaliators is an extremely gory, well-crafted revenge story about a pastor seeking answers in the violent death of his daughter. Michael Lombardi stars in a graphic mystery thriller that’s much better than it needed to be.
Better Watch Out (2016)
One of the more psychologically complex titles on this list, Chris Peckover’s edgy, bleakly comedic thriller centers on a home invasion, a resourceful babysitter (Olivia DeJonge), and the young boy (Levi Miller) who has the hots for her. Better Watch Out may be a little mean-spirited for general audiences unfamiliar with twisted slashers, but it’s made with considerable wit and craft. The plot twists are genuinely shocking and effective. It’s The Bad Seed meets Home Alone, and it’s satisfying if that sounds like your cup of eggnog. Next, try the best alternative Christmas movies.
