Editorials
The 10 Most Brutal Holiday Horror Kills!
As great as holiday horror movies like Gremlins and Krampus are, they still have that underlying Christmas sweetness about them. They’re dark, but there’s still the essence of the holiday spirit that makes them fairly family friendly. But sometimes you just want carnage with your holidays. It is a stressful time of year, after all. So I sought out the most ruthless of kills in holiday horror; the bloodiest, the meanest, and the most painful of kills inflicted against the backdrop of what’s meant to be the merriest of seasons. Here are the 10 most brutal holiday horror kills to spray the snow red with blood:
Black Christmas – Death by Unicorn
When it comes to this definitive classic, the most iconic and memorable death is the first of the ill-fated sorority sisters; Clare’s suffocation by plastic wrap. The most brutal, though, is Barb’s death. Played by Margot Kidder, Barb is the most entertaining of the girls and brings levity in a serious slasher. She toys with Sergeant Nash at the police station and humorously gives children some of her booze at a party, which makes her death sting the most. What makes it really brutal, though, is that she’s barely recovering from a severe asthma attack before Billy sneaks into her room and stabs her repeatedly with her own unicorn trinket. Harsh.
The Children – Impaled by Door
A family gathering over Christmas holiday turns deadly when the children suddenly start getting sick, then homicidal. Surprisingly dark and tense, these children get very bloody with their kills. But the most brutal kill of all isn’t an adult, but a child. Rebellious teen Casey is desperate to get to her mother on the other side of a locked door, when her mother is cornered and facing imminent death at the little hands of two deadly children. Casey breaks through just in time, grabbing Nicky and shoving him down, neck first, onto a huge splinter of broken door. Not only did The Children have the balls to kill a child on screen, but they made it bloody and merciless.
Christmas Evil – Toy Solider Attack
Like most holiday-themed horror, this film’s killer stemmed from a traumatic childhood Christmas in which he saw Santa doing naughty things to mommy. Thirty-three years later Harry is super obsessed with Christmas. He wants to become the next Santa and even works in a toy factory. Harry snaps, though, causing a murderous Christmas rampage. The unluckiest to cross paths with this killer Santa happens to be leaving Midnight Mass, where he proceeds to taunt Harry as Santa. Harry then stabs him in the eye with a toy soldier. It’s not fast enough punishment for Harry, though, so he plants an ax square into the guy’s skull.
Don’t Open till Christmas –Face Roasting over an Open Fire
This slasher features a killer that seeks to murder any Santa he comes across, in a subversion of the typical homicidal Santa featured in holiday horror. Which means a lot of poor unsuspecting guys in Santa suits getting dispatched in various ways just by being at the wrong place at the wrong time. The worst, though, is the poor Santa roasting chestnuts over a grill. The killer stumbles across the Santa and decides a more appropriate holiday treat would be to roast Santa’s face on the open fire instead. Santa’s charred flesh and screaming in pain, before falling in fully and catching fire makes for a vivid holiday memory.
Elves – Piercing Santa’s sack
This goofy ‘80s creature feature follows a Demonic Christmas elf summoned during an Anti-Christmas pagan ritual, unwittingly. Throw in a Nazi plot where they wish to create a mixed race of Aryans and evil Christmas elves, and you have one of the strangest horror movies ever that it’s no wonder this one doesn’t get brought up much. And the evil elf is one mean little demon. The worst of his misdeeds might be the way in which he murders a store Santa. This Santa might have been a sleaze, but getting stabbed over and over in the junk was so ruthlessly done that even I managed to feel phantom sympathy pain.
Silent Night, Deadly Night – Run Through by a Deer
Even if you haven’t seen this Christmas horror classic, chances are you’re at least familiar with this death. Poor Linnea Quigley. Of all the creative kills unleashed by a snapped Billy Chapman, hers was the most brutal. Not the decapitated sledder or cutting open poor Pamela with a box cutter. It was the slow impalement of Quigley’s character on hung antlers that proved most cringe-worthy, and the way the antlers slowly penetrated through her skin. Ouch.
Red Christmas – Blender Brains
Horror vet Dee Wallace plays a family matriarch that allows a stranger into her family’s home over Christmas. The stranger wastes no time offending her, and thus gets tossed out. His resulting anger causes him to tear the family apart, one by one, in increasing demented fashion. The most brutal of which involves a death by blender. It’s not the first time that the kitchen appliance has been used in horror, but this does win for being the goriest. The slow scramble of the eyes before they pop and a geyser of blood pours forth easily wins in creativity and brutality.
Silent Night – The Woodchipper
This very loose retelling of Silent Night, Deadly Night doesn’t offer much in the way of storytelling. What it does offer, though, is a handful of fun performances lead by scene-chewing Malcom McDowell as the small town sheriff, and a bunch of gory deaths at the hand of Santa. This killer Santa seeks out the worst, and delivers fatal punishment for their naughty behavior. Skin-crawling sexually deviant priests, spoiler rotten children, and softcore porn filmmakers draw Santa’s ire. The worst of which is the poor gal who just wanted to make a softcore porn video in a sleazy motel, only to have Santa chop off one of her legs after chasing her down in a Christmas tree farm. The farm has a convenient woodchipper nearby, where Santa watches as he feeds his victim leg first into it, blood spraying everywhere.
Black Christmas (2006) – Human Flesh Cookies
This remake doesn’t hold a candle to its predecessor, but it does up the ante on the gore and violence tenfold. The most brutal death of all, though, also happens to be the most deserved. Billy’s mother is such a piece of work that it’s no wonder he turned out the way he did. As much coldblooded death that he delivered throughout the film, none held a candle to what he did to mommy dearest. After offing mom’s lover, he first strangles her with a string of Christmas lights before ferociously bashing in her face with a rolling pin. In keeping with the holiday spirit, he then uses cookie cutters to cut out flesh from her back, throws it on a baking pan, and eats them as the police arrive to lock him up. I don’t think that’s what Santa had in mind for treats come Christmas Eve.
Inside – “I think it’s stuck”
Despite the lack of Christmas iconography, save for a few Christmas lights and decorations in the background, Inside is very much a holiday set horror film. It’s just that depressed mother-to-be Sarah doesn’t feel much like celebrating, having lost her husband in a violent car crash and all. Enter La Femme on Christmas Eve, the day before Sarah is scheduled to have her baby. La Femme is determined to take Sarah’s unborn baby, and Christmas Eve becomes awash in crimson as the violence escalates. Of all the gruesome deaths in the film, the worst is that of Sarah’s. Already battered, punctured and bruised from her encounter with La Femme, she’s brutally beaten in the stomach with the club of a very disoriented cop-turned-victim of La Femme’s. With the baby in peril, La Femme performs a C-section with scissors, tearing open Sarah in one of the most vicious, painful deaths in horror.
Five decades ago, Stephen King published the story of a bullied girl with telekinetic powers and forever changed the world of horror.
Carrie follows a high school misfit who seeks revenge for a hideous prank by psychically destroying her senior prom. The name Carrie White has become synonymous with the concept of a formal dance thanks to a flawless adaptation from Brian De Palma. Now fifty years after the film’s release, Mike Flanagan is putting his own stamp on the troubling story.
Rather than a feature film, the writer/director will expand King’s relatively slim debut novel into an eight-episode miniseries for Amazon Prime set to premiere on October 7.
Flanagan is no stranger to the world of Stephen King. A long-time Constant Reader, he first made waves with his daring adaptation of Gerald’s Game (2017), a novel many fans considered un-filmable. His underrated Doctor Sleep merges the disparate plot of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with King’s original source material, and his 2024 genre-bending tearjerker The Life of Chuck faithfully executes one of the author’s most metaphysical novellas.
He’s currently mired in pre-production for an expansive adaptation of The Dark Tower series, keystone to King’s connected universe, and Warner Bros. recently announced that Flanagan will helm a new version of The Mist, King’s 1980 novella which sees a small Maine town overrun by otherworldly monsters.
Considering the vast array of the author’s previously unadapted material, an obvious question arises. Why reimagine Carrie in 2026? Noting the timeless nature of the content, Flanagan expressed his desire to bring the story of a bullied girl into modern times, mirroring his approach to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He explained, “The only way to approach it was to build something new out of the ingredients of Carrie. Otherwise, there’s really no purpose in trying to retread ground that’s been so beautifully walked before.”
His miniseries will maintain the novel’s bloody bookends while delivering “big surprises” along the way.
A New Prom Night Nightmare
The roughly 60-second teaser introduces Summer H. Howell as Carrie White just before the moment of catastrophe. Standing in a prom dress, she smiles at her applauding classmates with an ominous crown perched upon her head. Moments later, Carrie unleashes a rage-filled scream into the night air while promgoers rush for the exit doors. But careful examination of this scene shows Carrie wearing a different, albeit dirty dress as she seems to telekinetically punish her peers.
In an exclusive first look with Entertainment Weekly, Flanagan explains that in his version of the story, “the events of that prom are going to be completely different.” An open trunk emitting a crimson glow does hint at the pig’s blood dumped on Carrie’s head, but it’s likely Flanagan’s formal dance will be a different kind of horror altogether. Despite these changes, the series may end with the widespread destruction outlined in the source material. Unlike any previous adaptations, King’s novel ends with the near-total destruction of Chamberlain, Maine. A flaming street in Flanagan’s trailer promises similar carnage no matter what prank sparks Carrie’s deadly revenge.
The Monstrous Addition of Social Media
On the opposite end of this fiery conclusion is an extreme act of bullying that brings together the story’s main cast. King’s novel begins as Carrie gets her first period while showering in the girls’ locker room. Completely unaware of the concept of menstruation, the sheltered girl thinks she’s bleeding to death. Her classmates respond with vitriolic rage. Led by ultra-mean girl Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton), they mock the terrified teen while pelting her with tampons. Glimpses of this disturbing event reveal that Flanagan has excised the scene’s nudity while adding a seismic update. As Carrie sobs in the shower stall, Chris and her friends film the breakdown with their phones.
Other scenes note the presence of social media, bringing King’s fifty-year-old story into the digital age.
Flanagan’s adaptation promises to explore the destructive power of social media, an often invisible entity with a potential for harm rivaling Carrie’s own powers. While King’s tormented heroine suffers in front of a small group of girls, Flanagan’s version of the incident will likely become a viral video, potentially circling the globe on social media. Similar to Katt Shea’s criminally underrated The Rage: Carrie 2, which includes elements of revenge porn exploitation, Flanagan’s modern retelling will distinguish itself by exploring the nebulous cruelty of online bullying, a force ten times more powerful than the irl pranks King first envisioned.
A Completely Reimagined White Family
In addition to modernizing these canon events, Flanagan hints at updates to Carrie’s oppressive upbringing at the hands of her mother, Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan). Dead before the novel begins, we never meet Carrie’s domineering father Ralph, known to carry a bible alongside his gun. Flanagan’s White household will be an altogether different beast. In his version of the story, Carrie and her mother have been hidden away in the unassuming home, forced out of hiding by Ralph’s unexpected death. Perhaps we will finally meet this elusive man whose shadow hangs over his wife and child. Considering the White family’s fundamentalist lifestyle, this reimagining hints at tradwife culture and a home ruled by staunch patriarchal control.
Whereas King’s Carrie has been tormented by her classmates since Kindergarten, Flanagan’s Carrie will be a wide-eyed newcomer to public school, eager to make friends and engage with her peers. We glimpse Carrie cozying up to Chris and the equally popular Sue Snell (Siena Agudong) as she navigates a new social scene. Of course, we know this kindness is part of an elaborate plot designed to lull Carrie into a false sense of camaraderie, setting up an atrocious act of public humiliation. These brief moments of feigned compassion put Sue’s own complicity into question. Will Flanagan’s version of the character find the courage to defend Carrie from vicious bullies or will she succumb to peer pressure and join in the mob mentality?
Perhaps the biggest deviation from King’s original text is the relationship between Carrie and her mother. King’s Margaret White is a horrifically abusive religious zealot whose worldview has been hardened by internalized misogyny. She shames Carrie for menstruating, locks her in a closet to “pray,” and regrets not killing her child in infancy. She’s also responsible for Carrie’s social ostracization. Known to berate her neighbors for their “sins,” Margaret forces her daughter to live by an extreme code of conduct and disallows any potential friends lest they corrupt the girl with their worldly ways.
Flanagan’s version of the character is perhaps just as much a victim as Carrie herself. Also trapped inside her home, his Margaret is overly vigilant, her own trauma manifesting as strict control. Describing a more sympathetic depiction of the iconic villain, Flanagan explains, “Our Margaret White is a woman who fiercely loves her daughter and wants to protect her from this world … [She] doesn’t know how to do that and thinks the way to protect her is to close her off; not punitively, but to create this private utopia.”
Despite this potential softening, Sloyan’s Margaret may still have a sharp edge. Though she has appeared in many Flanagan projects, from Hush (2016) to The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), she is best known for her role as the abhorrent Bev Keane in the poignant saga Midnight Mass (2021). Perhaps inspired by King’s Margaret White, Bev is pious and sadistic, willing to punish anyone who does not adhere to her warped approximation of Catholicism.
Flanagan specifically wrote Margaret with Sloyan in mind, likely remembering the actress’s eerie ability to create deceptive empathy and shift our allegiances on a dime.
Expanding Stephen King’s Telekinetic Universe
While most of King’s story deals with an unthinkable prom night in Chamberlain, Maine, large sections of the semi-epistolary novel see experts debating the nature of telekinesis. Do Carrie’s frightening abilities represent a new phase in human evolution or is the prom night carnage merely a fluke? King settles the debate with a shocking denouement in which a young mother recounts her infant daughter’s ability to dangle her crib toys in midair. We’re left to wonder if she will become another tormented girl who surprises the world with metaphysical strength.
Flanagan plans to build out this brief scene while amplifying themes of female empowerment. After introducing our main cast of characters, episode two will open with an unrelated story in which we meet another girl with the TK gene. Each subsequent chapter will expand this world, building out a roster of telekinetic young women. Considering King’s fondness for stories about powerful kids, often described as possessing “the shining,” Constant Readers will no doubt have their eyes peeled for various Easter Eggs nodding to the author’s vast catalogue.
Giving Carrie Her Own Voice
Perhaps the most striking distinction in Flanagan’s new trailer is the extent to which we hear Carrie’s voice. The sneak peek is fully narrated by the titular prom queen as she demands accountability. “I want to know why,” she explains while detailing Chris’ elaborate plan. Aside from the aforementioned coda, King’s book essentially ends with the aftermath of the prom night tragedy, leaving little time for Carrie to reflect. His shifting narrative does bring the reader into her fragile mind, though not before she’s been cowed by relentless cruelty. We watch Carrie sink into bloodthirsty revenge, but never hear a considered desire for justice or repair.
Flanagan’s original monologue allows Carrie to voice her pain and mourn the life she could have had. We’re also treated to a mug shot-style photo of Chris with a bruised and bandaged face, implying that the mean girl will have to answer for her senseless sadism.
Flanagan is known for filling his series adaptations with heartwrenching speeches that cut to the heart of his thematic intentions, and this teaser seems to follow suit. After years of fans, critics, and scholars analyzing Carrie’s pain, perhaps his modern retelling will offer the titular anti-hero a chance to finally speak for herself.
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