Typically around the holidays, most people gravitate toward movies that are more cheerful than “Bah! Humbug!”
But some people crave more than the cartoonish pratfalls of Home Alone or the cozy sentimentality of It’s a Wonderful Life — they want their mistletoe dripping in blood.
We’re some of those sickos here at Watch With Us. That’s why we compiled a brief but handy list of the best scary Christmas movies of all time.
From classic chillers to modern gems, these films deliver the festive goods in body bags rather than oversized stockings.
5. ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ (1984)
After years of abuse, first from his parents and later at an orphanage, teenager Billy Chapman (Robert Brian Wilson) has had enough. The only way he knows how to overcome his past trauma is to don a Santa Claus suit, wield an axe and determine who’s been naughty or nice. If it’s the former, well, you’d better watch out, because this Santa will come knocking and he won’t leave until you’re dead.
Silent Night, Deadly Night is a cheap, tawdry slasher movie with very little depth or logic. It’s also an effective horror movie that really utilizes its holiday theme to gruesome effect. Billy’s killer Claus doles out brutal punishment to those he deems bad, and their deaths are pretty graphic. The movie was successful enough to inspire several inferior sequels and a 2025 remake, which is now playing in theaters.
Silent Night, Deadly Night is streaming for free on Pluto TV.
4. ‘Tales from the Crypt’ (1972)
A movie with a killer Santa again claims a spot on this list, although he only appears in part of the film. Tales from the Crypt is an anthology movie from the early 1970s that adapted five famous stories from the horror comic book of the same name. Claus shows up in “…And All Through the House,” a twisted tale involving Joanne Clayton (Joan Collins), a beautiful young wife and mother who just killed her old husband on Christmas Eve to collect the insurance money.
Joanne ignores reports over the radio of an escaped lunatic dressed as Santa until she sees him lurking around her home. Since Joanne just committed murder, she can’t call the police for help without them discovering her crime. To add to the tension, Joanne’s daughter is asleep upstairs, and she eventually awakens when she believes she sees St. Nick coming down her chimney …
Tales from the Crypt is old-school horror — it’s all about the anticipation and dread of the unknown rather than a high body count. It’s also effective in making you care about a killer. Joanne is a murderer, sure, but at least she’s not dressed as Santa when she does her dirty deed. And she seems to care for her daughter, which makes her struggle against the psycho St. Nick all the more intense to watch.
Tales from the Crypt is streaming for free on Tubi.
3. ‘The Lodge’ (2020)
Grace (Riley Keough) is about to marry Richard Hall (Richard Armitage), but she’ll have to win over his two stubborn children, Aiden (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh), first. When they all spend a Christmas at a remote, snowed-in lodge in Massachusetts, Grace thinks this is her opportunity to prove her worth to her future stepkids. But Aiden and Mia have their own plans for Grace, one that involves exploiting her past as an ex-cult member and overreliance on her psychiatric medication. As Grace questions what’s real and what’s in her imagination, she’ll make several decisions that will change the Hall family forever.
The Lodge is more of a psychological horror film that frequently teases you by making you ask if what you’re seeing is actually happening or not. You’re in Grace’s shoes for most of the movie, so you question everything — where did the pet dog run off to? Why is the power out? Are they all dead and don’t know it? The longer The Lodge is on, the more unsettling it gets.
10 Best 1980s Horror Movies, Ranked From Least to Greatest
Even after its clever twist, the horror doesn’t stop; instead, a new layer of terror is revealed, one that was there all along. Pardon me for being vague here, but the less you know about The Lodge, the better. It’s a Christmas horror movie that contains a multitude of surprises, with each one more scary than the last.
The Lodge is streaming for free on Tubi.
2. ‘Gremlins’ (1984)
Some may argue that Gremlins isn’t scary at all — how could a PG-rated, Steven Spielberg-produced movie about a cute furry creature inspire fear in its audience? But Gen-Xers who watched the movie on cable growing up know the truth — Gremlins is scary AF at times, a surprisingly violent and nasty yuletide ode to small-town America.
When teenager Billy (Zach Galligan) receives Gizmo, a pint-sized pet with wide eyes and a good heart, as a gift for Christmas, he’s thrilled — and ignores his father’s warnings not to feed it after midnight. When the inevitable happens, the result is horrendous — Gizmo spawns several lizard-like gremlins, who soon multiply into the hundreds by getting wet. Billy, Gizmo and Billy’s girlfriend, Kate (Phoebe Cates), must save their sleepy village of Kingston Falls from being destroyed by an army of gremlins, who exist only to destroy everything in their path.
One of the scariest moments in the film occurs toward the end, when Billy’s mom has to battle with several gremlins in her darkened home while the holiday classic, “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” plays on the radio. The gremlins spare no mercy — they really try to kill her! — and the horror is only heightened by the tranquil song playing as she fights for her life.
Gremlins is streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
1. ‘Black Christmas’ (1974)
Before When a Stranger Calls and Halloween, there was Black Christmas. The film that really gave birth to the slasher genre is also one of the scariest movies of all time, and a movie I always watch as soon as the Christmas tree goes up.
Right before the Christmas holidays, a sorority house in Canada is terrorized by an obscene phone caller. Everyone makes light of the situation except Jess (Olivia Hussey), who becomes more concerned when one of her housemates goes missing. Is this an elaborate college prank, or is someone really targeting them for death?
10 Best Horror Movies of the 1970s, Ranked
What makes Black Christmas the scariest Christmas movie ever is that it convincingly creates a cozy, festive atmosphere that most of us feel safe in. The sorority house seen in the film is big and always full of people, so how can anyone be harmed there? But as Black Christmas graphically shows throughout its 98 minutes, that feeling of safety is only an illusion, as fragile as the tiny crystal sculptures that are used to kill one of the sorority sisters.
Perhaps most disturbing of all is the movie’s killer. Unlike most movie monsters, he wears no mask. We only get a few glimpses of him — an outstretched hand, an eyeball widened with rage — but we hear all of his twisted, incoherent thoughts via his barely intelligible phone calls. By the end, there’s no rhyme or reason for why he kills — only the persistent ringing of a telephone in a house with no one left alive or sane enough to pick it up.
Black Christmas is streaming for free on Prime Video.
