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5 Horror Movies To Watch On Christmas!!!

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Oh hey, I didn’t see you there!

I don’t have anything against Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I enjoy spending time with my family and actually like this time of year because of it. But if you’re home for the holidays, chances are you have very little control over what’s playing on the house TV. It’s just sort of on, right? No one in particular seems to be paying attention – and if there’s a movie playing it probably takes place during the holidays but no one seems to actually be watching it.

Here’s where these 5 movies come in. Should you be able to sneak control over your family’s home entertainment setup, you can toss a few of these guys on. After all, they’re technically holiday movies. Your parents didn’t specifically say they couldn’t contain murder and mayhem.

Head inside to check out 5 Horror Movies To Watch On Christmas!

GREMLINS

The most obvious choice, but also the best. Gremlins is one of my favorite movies, hands down. Such a beautifully structured film with a great amount of carnage but also a strong sense of fun. It’s also a movie that feels warmly towards the season but doesn’t have a problem criticizing it either. From Phoebe Cates’ horrific monologue to the film’s final assertion that western society just isn’t ready to deal with their gifts, Gremlins packs the darkness but wraps it inside a warm, fuzzy feeling. Kind of like the biological cycle of the film’s creatures, come to think of it.

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT

One thing the 1984 original has over this year’s remake is a sense of grainy, shot-on-film nostalgia. It still has its share of intense moments, but its overall slower pace means that there’s a slightly lower chance that your parents will yell at you to turn it off.

RARE EXPORTS

You can’t get in trouble for this one, it actually has Santa in it! To be fair, he’s a bit more of an *sshole here than society traditionally depicts him as, but it’s still fair game. Also, this thing has enough camp appeal that you run the risk of actually being kind of a hero to your family. Maybe they drop everything they’re doing, watch along and it becomes a new holiday tradition. Probably not, but you can hope, right?

INSIDE

This one doesn’t feel quite as Christmas-ish but it’s a bona fide instant classic, which more than makes up for it. Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s debut feature brings the gore, and it’s also legitimately terrifying. Out of the whole bunch, this is the one that will make your parents scream “what’s wrong with you?”

BLACK CHRISTMAS

It’s been so damn long since I’ve seen this movie that I might have to take my own advice and watch it alongside you today. I remember almost nothing except for liking it on whichever night I was able to sneak down into the living room as a kid to watch it. Weird blind spot, I know. Olivia Hussey, John Saxon and Margot Kidder? Murder, sororities and Christmas? Let’s make it happen.

Editorials

Finding Faith and Violence in ‘The Book of Eli’ 14 Years Later

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Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.

To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.

Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.

After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.


SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?

Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.

For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.

Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.

Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?


AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?

Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.

From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.

The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.

Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.

With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega


There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.

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