Editorials
9 Christmas Horror Films and TV Specials for the Whole Family
By the time Halloween wraps up, most people have tucked away their pumpkins and spider webs in favour of colourful wreaths and Santa figurines. For horror fans, it means Krampus and blood covered snow now take centre stage. The holiday of Christmas naturally lends itself to the horror genre, spawning favourites that include Black Christmas, Silent Night, Deadly Night, Rare Exports, and more. However, many films are too gruesome for younger people to enjoy.
To let children in on the festive and frightful fun, here is a variety of age-appropriate Christmas horror film and television specials the entire family can enjoy.
Creeped Out: Splinta Claws (2019)
Season 2, Episode 10
“Everyone knows there are nice children as well as naughty. But are there good and bad Santas as well?” This question is posed in the opening of the “Splinta Claws” episode of the anthology series Creeped Out on Netflix, which originally released in the UK and Canada. Creators Bede Blake and Robert Butler aimed for an Amazing Stories meets The Twilight Zone for children, desiring the series to terrify, inspire and enchant. The story unfolds in a department store on Christmas, where young boys Lawrence (Taighen O’Callaghan) and Mikey (Alex Eastwood) must survive an evil Santa animatronic who gives mercy to the naughty, but hunts after the nice.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid Christmas: Cabin Fever (2023)
In the two weeks lead up to Christmas, middle schooler Greg (Wesley Kimmel) yearns for a Mega Station 9000, the latest and most sought-after video game console. However, as everything goes wrong, he fears his mishaps may land him on the “naughty list,” never to receive the gift this year. Writer Jeff Kinney intentionally added elements of horror into the story, stating, “Holiday stories usually are very heartwarming, and I wanted to tell a story that’s kind of a scary story. It’s bit of a thriller.” There are several homages to the genre such as Psycho and Frankenstein, but it’s not an outright scary film. The horror mostly arises from Greg’s anxiety that he may get caught red-handed.
A Scooby Doo! Christmas (2002)
A take on The Legend of Sleepy Hallow, Scooby and the gang embark on a journey to a Christmas condo vacation but run against complaints of a Headless Snowman wreaking havoc on the citizens of Winter Hallow. The Headless Snowman prevents anyone from celebrating the holiday for reasons that are unclear. The gang then learns about a centuries-old tale of Blackjack Brody, a highwayman who stole gold and hid inside of a snowman only to freeze to death. Whether or not it is his vengeful ghost is the mystery that must be solved, so the town can celebrate Christmas safely once again.
Tales from the Dark Side – Monsters in My Room (1985)
Season 2, Episode 12
Timmy (portrayed by a young Seth Green) wants to spend the holiday playing piano and completing homework, but his alcoholic stepfather (Greg Mullavey) keeps encouraging him to participate in activities that will “man him up.” During the night, monsters come out from Timmy’s closet and under his bed, while a giant buzz saw zooms towards him. Despite Timmy expressing his frustrations, his mother (Beth McDonald), insists his stepfather is a good man. In the end, Timmy must learn that he alone has to stand up for himself in more ways than one.
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy – Billy & Mandy Save Christmas (2005)
Season 5, Episode 7
This is another special that falls under the “Saving Christmas” trope, but stands out in its unique storyline: Santa Claus has been turned into a vampire. The young protagonists Billy and Mandy, alongside their best friend the Grim Reaper, investigate how to help Mrs. Claus (Carol Kane) transform her beloved Santa (Gilbert Gottfried) back to normal by confronting the Head Vampire, Baron Von Ghoulish (Malcolm McDowell). Creator Maxwell Atoms originally planned for a Krampus-centred episode, but decided against it due to Cartoon Network already having Satan in Cow & Chicken and The Powerpuff Girls, who looks too similar to the Christmas devil.
Tales from the Cryptkeeper: It’s For You (1999)
Season 3, Episode 11
In the animated children friendly version of Tales from the Crypt, Gary (David Deveau) receives his very own landline phone in his bedroom for Christmas, where his parents warn him not engage in pranks. Against their wishes, Gary still prank calls multiple people and disturbs a mother and children in the process. When he takes it too far, the Cryptkeeper intervenes and teaches him a lesson in manners. This episode does feel very much of its time. Today’s technology is too advanced for prank calls to fool anyone, though the moral lesson still rings timeless.
R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour – A Creature Was Stirring (2010)
Season 1, Episode 3
On Christmas morning, an excited Timmy (Thomas Robinson) opens presents with his family. While he loves his gift, his brother and sister vocalise how much they hate theirs. It adds more tension in the air because unknown to the children, the parents are planning to get a divorce. When the conversation ends in an argument with everyone leaving the room, a mysterious package under the tree wiggles. Timmy opens it to find a winged bat-like creature that begins terrorising the family, who plays a larger role in his Christmas wish than he could have ever anticipated.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Recently selected for preservation in the National Film Registry for its cultural, historic, and aesthetic importance, The Nightmare Before Christmas makes a delightful family watch for both Halloween and Christmas. Jack Skellington (the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town) finds the Hinterlands, a forest with doors to different holidays. When he enters Christmas Town, he is forever changed by the experience and decides to bring the spirit to Halloween Town. The film was inspired by a poem Tim Burton wrote in 1981, which was later recited by Christopher Lee in 2008.
Gremlins (1984)
No list would be complete without the children’s horror Christmas classic, Gremlins. When Billy (Zach Galligan) receives a Mogwai as a gift, he is given a set of rules to abide by: avoid exposing it to bright light, don’t get it wet, and never feed it after midnight. Naturally, these rules are broken which spawns the Gremlins to manifest and wildly execute their shenanigans all over town. Fun fact: thanks to Gremlins and Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom, the PG-13 rating was established. The films were deemed too intense for younger children, and previously there was nothing in-between PG and R.
Editorials
The Lovecraftian Behemoth in ‘Underwater’ Remains One of the Coolest Modern Monster Reveals
One of the most important elements of delivering a memorable movie monster is the reveal. It’s a pivotal moment that finally sees the threat reveal itself in full to its prey, often heralding the final climactic confrontation, which can make or break a movie monster. It’s not just the creature effects and craftmanship laid bare; a monster’s reveal means the horror is no longer up to the viewer’s imagination.
When to reveal the monstrous threat is just as important as HOW, and few contemporary creature features have delivered a monster reveal as surprising or as cool as 2020’s Underwater.
The Setup
Director William Eubank’s aquatic creature feature, written by Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You) and Adam Cozad (The Legend of Tarzan), is set around a deep water research and drilling facility, Kepler 822, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, sometime in the future. Almost straight away, a seemingly strong earthquake devastates the facility, creating lethal destruction and catastrophic system failures that force a handful of survivors to trek across the sea floor to reach safety. But their harrowing survival odds get compounded when the group realizes they’re under siege by a mysterious aquatic threat.
The group is comprised of mechanical engineer Norah Price (Kristen Stewart), Captain Lucien (Vincent Cassel), biologist Emily (Jessica Henwick), Emily’s engineer boyfriend Liam (John Gallagher Jr.), and crewmates Paul (T.J. Miller) and Rodrigo (Mamadou Athie).
Eubank toggles between survival horror and creature feature, with the survivors constantly facing new harrowing obstacles in their urgent bid to find an escape pod to the surface. The slow, arduous one-mile trek between Kepler 822 and Roebuck 641 comes with oxygen worries, extreme water pressure that crushes in an instant, and the startling discovery of a new aquatic humanoid species- one that happens to like feasting on human corpses. Considering the imploding research station, the Mariana Trench just opened a human buffet.
The Monster Reveal
For two-thirds of Underwater’s runtime, Eubank delivers a nonstop ticking time bomb of extreme survival horror as everything attempts to prevent the survivors from reaching their destination. That includes the increasingly pesky monster problem. Eubank shows these creatures piecemeal, borrowing a page from Alien by giving glimpses of its smaller form first, then quick flashes of its mature state in the pitch-black darkness of the deep ocean.
The third act arrives just as Norah reaches the Roebuck, but not before she must trudge through a dense tunnel of sleeping humanoids. Eubank treats this like a full monster reveal, with Stewart’s Norah facing an intense gauntlet of hungry creatures. She’s even partially swallowed and forced to channel her inner Ellen Ripley to make it through and inside to safety.
Yet, it’s not the true monster reveal here. It’s only once the potential for safety is finally in sight that Eubank pulls the curtain back to reveal the cause behind the entire nightmare: the winged Behemoth, Cthulhu. Suddenly, the tunnel of humanoid creatures moves away, revealing itself to be an appendage for a gargantuan creature. Norah sends a flare into the distance, briefly lighting the tentacled face of an ancient entity.
It’s not just the overwhelming vision of this massive, Lovecraftian entity that makes its reveal so memorable, but the retroactive story implications it creates. Cthulhu’s emerging presence, awakened by the relentless drilling at the deepest depths of the ocean, was behind the initial destruction that destroyed Kepler 822. More importantly, Eubank confirmed that the Behemoth is indeed Cthulhu, which means that the humanoid creatures stalking the survivors are Deep Ones. What makes this even more fascinating is that the choice to give the Big Bad Behemoth a Lovecraftian identity wasn’t part of the script. Eubank revealed in an older interview with Bloody Disgusting how the creature quietly evolved into Cthulhu.
The Death Toll
Just how deadly is Cthulhu? Well, that depends. Most of the on-screen deaths in Underwater are environmental, with implosions and water pressure taking out most of the characters we meet. The Deep Ones are first discovered munching on the corpse of an unidentified crew member, and soon after, kill and eat Paul in a gruesome fashion. Lucien gets dragged out into the open depths by a Deep One in a group attack but sacrifices himself via his pressurized suit to save his team from getting devoured.
The on-screen kill count at the hands of this movie monster and its minions is pretty minimal, but the news article clippings shown over the end credits do hint toward the larger impact. Two large deepsea stations were eviscerated by the emergence of Cthulhu, causing an undisclosed countless number of deaths right at the start of the film.
Norah gives her life to stop Cthulhu and save her remaining crewmates, but the Great Old One isn’t so easily vanquished. While the Behemoth may not have slaughtered many on screen here, his off-screen kill count through sheer destruction is likely impressive.
But the takeaway here is that Underwater ends in such a way that the Lovecraftian deity may only be at the start of a new reign of terror now that he’s awake.
The Impact
Neither Underwater or Cthulhu overstay their welcome here. Eubank shows just enough of his Behemoth to leave a lasting impression, without showing too much to ruin the mystery. The nonstop sense of urgency and survival complications only further the fast-paced thrills.
The result is a movie monster we’d love to see more from, and for horror fans, there’s no greater compliment than that.
Where to Watch
Underwater is currently available to stream on Tubi and FX Now.
It’s also available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.
In television, “Monster of the Week” refers to the one-off monster antagonists featured in a single episode of a genre series. The popular trope was originally coined by the writers of 1963’s The Outer Limits and is commonly employed in The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and so much more. Pitting a series’ protagonists against featured creatures offered endless creative potential, even if it didn’t move the serialized storytelling forward in huge ways. Considering the vast sea of inventive monsters, ghouls, and creatures in horror film and TV, we’re borrowing the term to spotlight horror’s best on a weekly basis.
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