The best Christmas movies aren’t always fit for the whole family. While it’s nice to cozy up on Christmas Eve and watch a classic festive flick with the kids, there are many Christmas movies that are so violent and terrifying that adults can get a different kind of kick. Over the last few decades, these quirky types of festive films have become more and more popular.
As a result, you’ll typically find a fair few adult Christmas movies released each year alongside the traditional ones. So, let’s take a deep dive into the darker side of this magical time of year. Here’s our pick of the 5 best Christmas movies strictly for adults.
5. Violent Night (2022)
Many moviegoers would consider Die Hard to be the ultimate Christmas movie for adults. However, Violent Night takes the siege-like premise and thrusts Santa Clause right into the middle of the mayhem and bloodshed. Only this Santa has a dark and lethal past.
Led by Stranger Things star David Harbour, this Christmas Eve-set action thriller is spliced with the right amount of comedy. The plot focuses on Santa as his evening of gift delivering is disturbed by a vicious group of mercenaries who descend on a wealthy family’s home looking for a priceless loot. Instead of going on his merry way, Santa unleashes an onslaught of violence as he takes on the trained killers. Campy in parts, yes, but there is some serious heart to this film and a backstory we’ve never seen for Santa before. Simply put, this Nick is far from a saint.
4. Fatman (2020)
Two years prior to Violent Night, Mel Gibson stepped into the shoes of Jolly ol’ Saint Nick in Fatman. But just like David Harbour’s rendition, this take on Santa isn’t so jolly – he’s lethal. This darkly comic Christmas movie for adults feels like Quentin Tarantino decided to make a holiday movie. It’s packed full of slick dialogue, criminal backstories, mysteries, and violence.
The plot centres on a young boy who takes out a hit on Santa when he doesn’t get what he wants for Christmas. Already facing foreclosure on his North Pole operations, Santa is wound tight. So when the brutal hitman arrives, it makes for an epic showdown. See this movie for what it is: daft, violent, and oddly upbeat. A sure-fire recipe for an exciting Christmas Eve watch.
3. The Advent Calendar (2021)
The Advent Calendar is certainly not for children. This tense and taut French horror flick debuted on Shudder in 2021 and has been consistently gaining traction ever since. The plot centres on Eva, a paraplegic woman feeling lonely in the build-up to Christmas. On her birthday, her friend Sophie attempts to cheer her up by gifting her with a strange Advent calendar. However, it’s not full of the traditional treats you find when you open each drawer, but quirky gifts that increase in menace and bloodshed.
Patrick Ridremont‘s carefully-paced vehicle serves up a truly unique take on the adult Christmas movie realm. While its tension builds slowly, with each new day on the calendar, the ante is upped, dread grows, and the terror skyrockets. By the end of the film, even the most seasoned of horror fanatics will be clutching at their arm rests.
2. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale could be fit for children if it cut out its violence. The problem is, the said violence takes up the majority of the picture. Although an action thriller on the surface (with glimmers of horror), at its core, this Finnish gem is a fantastical journey that is, at times, as uplifting as it is shocking. For that, it’s a wholly unique Christmas film.
The film follows the quest of a small group of people from a tight-knit town in Finland. However, they don’t stay tight-knit for long, as on Christmas Eve, Santa Claus is unearthed in an archaeological dig. When children start disappearing, a boy and his father capture Santa and, with the help of fellow hunters, look to sell him back to the corporation that sponsored the dig. What unfolds can only be described as sheer chaos. However, there is plenty of dark humor to lighten the load, making Rare Exports a total thrill ride.
1. Black Christmas (1974)
Way before horror movies started splicing their narrative with festive spirit, and long before action movies began setting themselves at the backdrop of Christmas, 1974’s Black Christmas shocked the industry with its hyper-violent and unrelenting approach. Today, it is considered a true pioneer of Christmas horror. Not only that, it’s a trailblazer in slasher pictures, coming before the likes of Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Bob Clark‘s classic horror movie is deceptively simple yet devastatingly effective: a group of sorority sisters are stalked and murdered by an unseen killer hiding in their attic during the Christmas break, making terrifying, obscene phone calls before striking. What made Black Christmas so influential (and so brutal for its time) was Clark’s refusal to show mercy or follow convention. The violence was intensely graphic for 1974, but more disturbing was the psychological terror: the killer’s POV shots, the vulgar phone calls dripping with sexual menace, and the fact that the murderer is never fully revealed. Watching this movie today, it’s easy to see the clearcut path that was laid out for other horror filmmakers, with this repetition going on to become common tropes of horror. But perhaps pioneer Bob Clark did it best.
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