Not feeling holly-jolly this year or tired of faking it? One more year of watching A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, Elf and all the rest starting to feel as played out as the drummer boy? I get it. Traditions are great, and don’t get me wrong, I need to watch Heat Miser and Snow Miser every year in addition to Die Hard, but it’s also okay not to be okay at the holidays. Many people suffer from holiday depression and sometimes you just don’t feel like watching George Bailey run up and down the street yelling Merry Christmas to everyone. You’re more on the side of Mr. Potter barking “and a happy new year to you! In jail!”
One way to not-celebrate the holidays is watching a few good holiday horror movies. Each year my candlemaking assistant and I have a tradition of finding the most hilariously dark, bordering on ridiculous Christmas horror movies we can find. Last year we watched Santa Jaws, laughing and wondering how the Great White managed to keep that Santa hat on. Also watched Elves, a Danish series about some Gremlin/Dobbie carnivorous elves on an island where a family goes for Christmas; the daughter befriends a baby killer elf, calamity occurs.
Some of these films are meant to be terrifying versus creepy/campy, and succeed, like the classic Krampus. The newer Violent Night (“time for some season’s beatings”) is a comedy-horror, because it can be difficult to do a holiday-themed serial killer film and it’s hard not to add laughter, cue the tired references to the naughty list. Boy they love a campy name and a “careful what you wish for” theme, don’t they, because you can also check out It’s a Wonderful Knife to see what terror abounds in “Angel Falls” when you wish you’d never been born.
This year Marissa and I watched The Mean One, which was the horror movie version of The Grinch, and it was campy: a knock-off narrator, scary Grinch costume serial killer, and the story of Cindy Lou coming home as an adult to “Newville” to avenge her mother’s death-by-Grinch 20 years before. It’s hard not to laugh when you see how Cindy Lou exacts her revenge.
We followed that with the not-as-well produced Nutcracker Massacre: a Nutcracker doll possessed by the spirit of a 19th-century German soldier comes to life and runs around offing people. Yawn: only worth watching to laugh at a giant killer nutcracker while drinking copious amounts of egg nog as part of your holiday horror binge party.
Check out this great list of holiday horror for more Christmas creep.