The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Christmas takes places annually on December 25th and is observed as a holiday (or holiday season) in most countries around the world. The origins of Christmas are not certain but it was celebrated for many centuries as a Christian tradition and as the birth date of Jesus Christ. In recent years, Christmas has become much more secular in nature and drops all Christian reference.
Christmas season is a traditional time of celebration, family gathering, sending Christmas cards, decorating a Christmas tree, covering the outside of houses in festive lights, holding a dinner on Christmas Day and of Christmas morning where wrapped presents are left under the Christmas tree for family members.
Overseeing Christmas is the mythic figure of Santa Claus or Father Christmas who is traditionally believed to live at the North Pole with a retinue of Elves that make the toys that are left under the tree. On Christmas Eve, Santa flies around the world by reindeer-drawn sleigh to place the gifts under the Christmas tree, descending down chimneys to do so.
There are numerous films about Santa, his wife, his brother, his children, others inheriting the role, or about the elves and even about the reindeer. These are almost always light-hearted and upbeat in nature, frequently comedic, and designed for release at the Christmas season. Christmas TV Movies are so plentiful and nauseatingly treacly in their upbeat family sentiments that this site no longer makes the effort to cover them.
One of the most popular Christmas stories is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) wherein a miser is visited by three spirits, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, on Christmas Eve taking him on a journey through time in an effort to redeem him. This has undergone a substantial number of film adaptations and retellings.
At contrast, there is a body of films that hold much darker sentiments, showing a less than wholesome sentiment or delighting in trashing Christmas spirit. There is also a growing body of Christmas horror films – of slasher films featuring psychopathic Santas or people going on killing sprees at Christmas-time. More recent years have brought an interest in the Germanic folklore figure of Krampus who punishes the naughty at Christmas.
A strong and effective reworking of the psycho Santa slasher film. This conducts a well-oiled rehearsal of all the slasher tropes and delivers exactly what we expect of it
An animated collaboration between Aardman and Sony Pictures Anomation. This has a good deal of eccentric charm that overcomes one’s dislike of the cloying sentiment of most Christmas films
An extremely good film that starts out seeming like a standard stalked babysitter effort before everything gets turned on its head with most pleasing results
Many argue that this is the original slasher film – and it does the whole formula a good deal better than many of those that came along a few years later, having some wry characterisations and a sardonic sense of humour
Another in the mid-2000s fad for 1970s remakes. This revives what has been cited as the first slasher film but throws most of the original out and turns the rest into a gore-drenched slasher film
Gil Kenan dips into motion-capture animation to make this charming and likeable Christmas film that in effect tells a Santa Claus origin story, one that works without drowning in saccharine sentiment
Eddie Murphy – one of the funniest talents of the 1980s – has been largely absent for much of the 2010s. He returns here with a Christmas comedy in which he is the recipient of a curse given to him by an evil Santa elf
A fine classic cinematic adaptation of the oft-filmed Charles Dickens tale about the redemption of a miser, starring Reginald Owen as Scrooge
Well-made and extremely faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens’s perennial Christmas story starring George C. Scott as Scrooge. This brings out story elements other versions skip over
For my money, the best adaptation of the multiply-filmed Charles Dickens tale. Patrick Stewart is a great Scrooge and the film respects the story, giving its milieu and central character life as a tale for adults
TV movie version of the oft-filmed Charles Dickens tale featuring Kelsey Grammer as a very theatrical Scrooge. This tells the story as a musical but also manages to be surprisingly faithful to the original
Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture animated adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic. The tale has gone through so many adaptations, it fee;s an uphill battle to find anything new in the story no matter the technical quality of the film
A tv mini-series that offers a dark, adult and definitely not family friendly version of the oft-filmed Charles Dickens tale that reinvents the original in quite astonishing ways
One of the original Psycho Santa films. Usually pegged as another Christmas slasher film, rather what we have is a film that draws us into a disturbed headspace that operates on a unique fairytale morality about punishing the naughty
An anthology that offers a quartet of Christmas horror stories, including ones of zombified elves and a Krampus monster. Hosted by William Shatner who plays a radio talkshow host in the wraparound
Cheaply made and mind bogglingly bizarre Quebecois film about a Martian who takes two children on a journey around the world at Christmas
Has there ever been a good film combining the concepts of ‘Christmas’ and ‘Mars’? A film made by cult band The Flaming Lips about the first colonists on Mars as they celebrate Christmas
An incredibly dreary Christmas film directed by actor Rosanno Brazzi where the South Pole in bought by a miser (played by Brazzi) and Santa ends up being evicted
Before the films, this was an earlier BBC tv mini-series version of the C.S. Lewis book, one of a series of four adaptations. This is faithful to the story but suffers from impoverished effects
The film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s book sought to appeal to audiences for the Lord of the Rings films but between Lewis’s heavy-handed Christian allegories and Andrew Adamson’s inexperience as a director fails to fly
The almost indescribable second film from Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet of Delicatessen fame, a Dicekensian street urchin fantasy that takes place in a stunningly designed almost-familiar world filled with eccentric characters
An interestingly strange and undeniably different film where two teens break into a house at Christmas time to find a mother who keeps her daughter confined lest the creature inside her get free
Forget Mad Max et al, this Ethiopian film is a fascinatingly different take on the post-holocaust film – set after the collapse of civilisation where the junk culture of today has developed a mythology of its own
Yes, exactly what the title announces – a film about a possessed killer Christmas tree. A rather amusing Christmas horror entry from prolific low-budget British producer Scott Jeffrey/Scott Chambers
The 1980s slasher fad brought a number of ventures into the Christmas slasher film, which has grown into its own genre niche since then. This is one British entry in the genre about a killer targeting people dressed as Santa
Jon Favreau directed Christmas film premised entirely around the premise of 6’3″ Will Ferrell as an ungainly Christmas elf. The film works entirely to the extent one has a tolerance for Ferrell’s screen presence.
This was the second of Jim Varney’s Ernest P. Worrel comedies. It sees Santa Claus looking for a replacement and Ernest coming to the aid amid a series of comic shenanigans
Amusingly dark Christmas film where a kid hires a hitman to kill Santa after receiving a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking. Featuring Mel Gibson as a grumpy Santa struggling with modern economic realities
A Christmas film with Vince Vaughn as Santa’s younger brother, a petty street hustler. A promising sarcastic tone falls into easy predictable routines and characters arcs
Another psycho Santa film – a genre that is almost gaining its own niche. This British entry fearlessly pushes its elements to an extreme that most of these other Christmas horrors balk at
The film about malicious creatures that was the runaway box-office hit of 1984. Director Joe Dante runs amok like a schoolboy with a chemistry kit and gleefully trashes the wholesome innocence of producer Steven Spielberg’s E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial
After Ron Howard’s over-produced version of the Dr Seuss story, one looked to Illumination Entertainment, the animation company behind the Despicable Me films, to do the story right
The first in a series of Terry Pratchett Discworld adaptations for tv. This makes the odd choice of adapting one of the more complex and darker of Pratchett’s usually comic books but it works fairly well overall
Ron Howard’s live-action adaptation of the Dr Seuss story visually embraces the nonsense absurdism but the charms get buried beneath the lavish production polish. Jim Carrey saves the day as The Grinch however.
Nicely made seasonal tv movie where cynical Ally Walker has her life turned around by the appearance of her childhood self (Hayden Panettiere)
From regular horror director Brian Yuzna, a sequel to the Christmas slasher films series. This is quite possibly not only the weirdest Christmas film ever made but the weirdest Christmas horror film ever made
Sentimental Frank Capra film that had become a Christmas classic where an angel shows depressed everyman James Stewart the alternate world that would happen if he had never been born
A film about a killer snowman. Conceived as a one-liner spouting villain and outfitted with a series of novelty Christmas-themed deaths, this does not take itself too seriously with rather appealing results
Drawing on the Teutonic traditions of the anti-Santa, this gleefully wades into anti-Christmas spirit. Although never as much as it promises to be, it does astonish at a major studio releasing such a dark film right on Christmas season
Krampus, Santa’s evil brother, was an obscure piece of Germanic folklore until repurposed for the Christmas horror film in the mid-2010s and. This, while not very good, was the first of these
Another low-budget Krampus film. However, this is more if an evil vhild film with Krampus as a boogeyman that occasionally pops up to kill people on her behalf
This is a misleadingly titled film that features no Krampus and is actually a low-budget Christmas slasher that has been renamed by the distributor. Poorly made on all accounts.
Among the fad for biopics about writers and the origins of famous stories, this, about Charles Dickens and the creation of A Christmas Carol, is the most lunatic – and that’s not counting the blatant lie of the title
Sequel to Single Santa Seeks Mrs Claus where here Santa’s son (Steve Guttenberg) ties the knot – amazingly traditional and conservative in its sentiments and with everything so predictable that there is no real drama
A real head-scratching oddity, a Batman animated Christmas film
Classic Christmas film with Edmund Gwenn as a man who is placed on trial after he insists he is the real Santa Claus
A John Hughes written remake of the classic Christmas film where a man (Richard Attenborough) claiming to be Santa ends up tried in court.
From the same people who made Demonic Christmas Tree, this is a supernatural retribution film that was sold as a Krampus film
While the title makes this sound like a family-friendly film about Santa’s wife, this is actually a Christmas slasher film
The first of the insipid Muppet movies made following Jim Henson’s death, directed by his son Brian. This twists the Muppets out of shape to fit them into a retelling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
Tim Burton and Henry Selick combine on this stop-motion animated fantasy made in Burton’s characteristcially eccentric style, a beautifully stylised and dark fantasy in which assorted Halloween denizens invade Christmas
This broke ground in being the first animated film made using the motion-capture process. Robert Zemeckis directs with a quite magical touch
An appealing bittersweet film based around the improbable premise of a young girl finding what she believes is one of Santa’s reindeer. In a genre that usually deals in sugary sentiment, this has a much more rewarding downbeat realism
A Finnish film that comes as appealing anathema to the rosy sentiments of most Christmas films – more like a monster movie where Santa is a monster that punishes bad children
Essentially Christmas the Action Film featuring Dwayne Johnson as Santa’s bodyguard going into action accompanied by Chris Evans as a nerdy hacker when Santa is abducted
Cheaply made video sequel to the Macaulay Culkin Richie Rich based on the popular comic-book character, this steals the basic plot of It’s a Wonderful Life
The concept – sort of akin to
Jenn Wexler directs a film about thugs taking over a girls’ boarding school that pleasingly subverts your expectations of everything it is going to be at every turn
Painful Christmas movie where Santa’s daughter takes on an evil miser
TV movie where Jenny McCarthy plays Santa’s daughter who takes over the family business
Children’s movie where a Martian dictator abducts Santa, this has gained a cult bad movie status
The producers of the Christopher Reeve Superman films turn to making a Santa film but this proved a massively over-budgeted flop
This comes with one of the great exploitation titles of all time. Despite the enormously entertaining possibilities inherent in the premise, the film misses all of them and falls down into complete amateurism within moments
The first of two sequels to The Santa Clause with Tim Allen as Santa Claus, this benefits from a bigger budget
Third of the Santa Clause films starring Tim Allen as Santa where his reality is upended by the evil Jack Frost
Popular film with Tim Allen as a regular family man who is forced to become Santa. Several sequels followed.
Christmas horror film with wrestler Bill Goldberg playing a demonic version of Santa Claus
This is usually regarded as one of the best versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a British-made production starring Alistair Sim
Musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol starring Albert Finney as Scrooge, this is made on a big budget, leading to an extravagant and often over-produced film
A modernised version of A Christmas Carol that seems to have been construed in the shadow of Ghostbusters right down to casting Bill Murray as Scrooge
This is a very loose and somewhat desultory remake of Silent Night, Deadly Night that seems to imagine it is being far more hardcore and controversy defying than it is
Maybe the best Christmas movie ever. Maybe also the bleakest as a group of friends gather to celebrate Christmas dinner before the end of the world
The third in the Christmas slasher series where the killer’s brother is resurrected like a Frankenstein monster and develops an obsession with a blind girl. Played with far more seriousness than it deserves
Not the first but the most famous of the psycho Santa films. At the time, it was just another slasher film exploiting a holiday title. However, this does the slasher movie formula rather well while digging into Christmas sentiment with a bite that takes you aback
The first sequel to the Santa slasher film. This has become a bad movie classic because half the film brazenly consists of footage recycled from the first, while the other half is dominated by the hilariously bad acting of psycho Eric Freeman
Mawkishly sentimental Christmas tv movie with Steve Guttenberg as Santa’s son who needs to find a wife before he can take over the role. So cliched and written to expectation that it lacks any conflict
A trio of alt girls do urban exploring and walk into a war between a grumpy, retired Santa and Krampus
Imagine A Christmas Carol retold as a bromance where Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present abandon hauntings and become besties
Amicus adapts several stories from the notorious EC Comics as one of their anthology films. Missing is EC’s black humour but this is a worthwhile Amicus anthology
Here the less-than-serious Teen Titans Go! conduct an Into the Spider-Verse-type crossover with their serious counterparts from the multiverse
This is a Norwegian film based on the Scandinavian folklore figure of the barn elf, a household spirit that can turn malevolent if upset. The film becomes in essence a Nordic version of Gremlins
From Troma films, this is an anthology made up of twelve Christmas-themed short horror films for what supposed leading indie directors – so acclaimed I’ve only heard of two of them before
Modest and well-made low-budget anthology of Christmas horror tales from three Canadian filmmakers
The third film in the series of stoner comedies trips off into gonzo genre territory. A relentlessly and unashamedly vulgar film that also manages to be occasionally quite funny
Dark and definitely not sentimental Christmas film with David Harbour as a cynical Santa repelling a home invasion. This does not let down on the violent half of the title
Dull live-action tv remake of the Rankin-Bass stop-motion animated Christmas special