16 Terrible Gifts Given in Horror Movies

If you regift these presents quick enough, maybe you can avoid all the harm they bring.

Gizmo in Gremlins (1984) is undeniably cute, but as a gift, the little furball is terrible.

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For some people, gift-giving is practically an art form. They always know the exact perfect present for any person, and for any occasion. For others, gift-giving occassions are nightmares. They never know what to get, and whatever they do end up gifting isn’t received well. But it’s the thought that counts, right? Not all the time.

Sometimes a gift is so terrible that it could be the basis of a horror movie. Listed here is a collection of those kinds of presents, the ones that the giver should have thought a little harder about before they cursed their recipient with something grotesque, harmful, or deadly.

Terrible Gifts Given in Horror Movies

The Curse of the Necklace (2024)

Gift: an antique necklace cursed by a ghost

Frank is an awful husband, and an even worse gift-giver. As The Curse of the Necklace begins, Frank (Henry Thomas) is separated from his wife Laura (Sarah Lind) for being stubborn, unsupportive, and quick to anger. As a misguided effort to make up with Laura, he gifts her an antique necklace, but there are a couple of problems with it. First, Frank—who is a police officer—stole the necklace out of a box of evidence taken from the scene of a brutal murder (there was also a bloody knife in the box). Second, the necklace carries a supernatural curse that brings with it a haunting which eventually leads to possession and death. On top of everything, since Frank isn’t living at home with his family, the brunt of the curse is endured by his wife and their two daughters.

Gremlins (1984)

Gift: a mogwai

This is more of a good/bad gift situation. On the positive side, the furry little mogwai Billy (Zach Galligan) receives as a Christmas present from his father is agonizingly cute. However, the tiny creature, Gizmo, comes with some extremely important rules that seem rather difficult to maintain. If those rules aren’t followed, very bad things happen. Billy is unable to follow the rules, and it leads to Gizmo unintentionally spawning other mogwai who turn into gremlins that cause mass destruction throughout the town. Aren’t there laws about owning exotic animals?

Longlegs (2024)

Gift: life-sized dolls

Beware of SPOILERS if you haven’t seen Longlegs yet!

There are many unsettling things in Longlegs. For one, the character who goes by the name Longlegs (played by Nicolas Cage) will make your skin crawl. There is also a sense of overwhelming dread that permeates the entire movie, and is expressed through the unbelievably tense performance of Maika Monroe as an FBI agent investigating a series of inexplicable murders. Perhaps most unsettling though, are the dolls. Multiple girl-sized dolls are seen throughout Longlegs, and by the end they take a central spot in unraveling the core mystery of the movie. Without going into too much detail, these dolls are given as surprise gifts which lead to very bad things.

Child’s Play (1988)

Gift: a doll inhabited by the soul of a serial killer

Karen Barclay means well, but sometimes even the best intentions can go horribly wrong. Karen (Catherine Hicks) is a single mother raising a boy, Andy (Alex Vincent), on a meager salary. Andy’s birthday is coming up, and the only thing he wants is a Good Guy doll. Karen couldn’t save up enough money to get a brand new Good Guy, so she makes a deal in an alleyway with a peddler to purchase a doll of dubious origins. The gift is a huge success, and Andy quickly becomes best friends with Chucky the talking doll. However, people begin dying over the next few days, and Andy eventually learns that his “friend ’til the end” is the culprit. Even worse for Andy, Chucky needs to transfer his soul into the boy’s body before he becomes stuck forever as a doll.

The Devil’s Gift (1984)

Gift: a cursed cymbal monkey

For his birthday, young Michael Andrews receives a cymbal-banging monkey toy from his father’s girlfriend. Mike likes the gift fine, but he doesn’t really think about it much after a while. Mike’s father David, however, becomes convinced that the monkey is deadly. First, plants around the house die. Then the family dog is killed in an accident. David begins having nightmares as well, and a consultation with a fortune teller has him worried that a demonic force is working through the monkey. In fact, the monkey has killed before, bringing lightning down on a woman’s house in the opening scene of the movie. Now, the monkey is trying to kill and kill again.

The Advent Calendar (2021)

Gift: an ornate German advent calendar with a deadly warning

Having a birthday near Christmas can be a pain. Instead of getting two separate days of presents for a birthday and the holiday, Christmas babies might often receive just one gift for both occasions. Eva (Eugénie Derouand) was born in December, and her friend gifts her a beautiful advent calendar from Germany as a combined birthday/Christmas present. But advent calendars are the gifts that keep on giving, right? Though that might be true, what this advent calendar gives on each day is a mixture of miraculous and horrific. There’s also a catch. Once Eva begins the calendar and eats the candy in the first box, she must continue through until the end, following every instruction found in the various compartments. Otherwise, she’ll die.

My Bloody Valentine (1981)

Gift: an actual heart

Do you consider secret admirers to be creepy or cute? It probably depends on their actions. For the mayor of the small Canadian town of Valentine Bluffs, a heart-shaped candy box left for him anonymously has him feeling pretty good. That is, until he opens it. Instead of candy, this Valentine’s Day gift contains an actual human heart resting in a pool of blood. This isn’t from any secret admirer. Could it be the town’s boogeyman, Harry Warden, returning to ruin everyone’s Valentine’s Day celebrations once again?

Creepshow (1982)

Gift: a Father’s Day cake

Some people don’t ask for much when it comes to gifts. Here’s an example. In the first story segment of Creepshow, all Nathan Grantham (Jon Lormer) wants for Father’s Day is a cake. He’s not very nice about asking for it though. In fact, he demands his cake with insults and abuse directed at his daughter Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors). Nathan does not receive his cake. Instead, he receives an ashtray to the head. Nathan dies without his cake, but seven years later he rises from the grave to get his Father’s Day cake for himself.

Trick or Treat (1986)

Gift: a satanic acetate record

Record collecting is a popular activity these days, and rare discs can fetch huge sums of money. Eddie Weinbauer isn’t concerned about money though. When he is gifted the only known acetate recording of his idol’s final, unreleased album, it’s priceless. Eddie starts listening to the record and plays it backwards. To his surprise, the ghost of metal musician Sammi Curr speaks directly to the teenager. At first Eddie is elated, but he is soon horrified when he learns of Sammi’s truly dark plan to come back from the dead.

Polaroid (2019)

Gift: a polaroid camera inhabited by an evil entity

Bird (Kathryn Prescott) is given an old Polaroid camera by a boy who has a crush on her. She tests the camera out on him, and later that night she notices a shadowy figure in the background of the photo she took. That same night, the boy is found dead. Soon after, Bird discovers that the shadow figure is gone from the boy’s photo and is now in the background of another picture. By the time she realizes that the shadow represents an evil entity who kills whoever has their photo taken with the camera, it might already be too late. Why? Because she’s taken a group photo of her best friends.

Demons (1985)

Gift: tickets to the screening of a demonic movie

Don’t accept gifts from strangers, especially if that stranger is a weird guy in a silver mask handing out tickets to an unknown movie that he won’t talk about. That’s the lesson learned by Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) when she accepts two tickets from a creepy weirdo and convinces her friend Kathy (Paola Cozzo) to accompany her to the Metropol theater. The movie they go to see turns out to be a horror film about demons, and it isn’t long before there are real demonically possessed people running through the theater, killing and transforming just about everyone into even more demons.

Frankenhooker (1990)

Gift: a remote-controlled lawnmower

Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) is gifted when it comes to science and technology. The problem is, his creations don’t always work like they’re supposed to. Take, for instance, the remote-controlled lawnmower he creates for his fiancée Elizabeth’s father. The lawnmower is a birthday gift, but when Elizabeth (Patty Mullen) is showing it off, she accidentally gets caught in the blades and is chopped to pieces. Jeffrey manages to save Elizabeth’s head, and with the body parts of a bunch of exploded ladies of the night, he creates a new body and brings her back to life as Frankenhooker! Of course, similar to how his gifted lawnmower was immediately deadly, the reconstructed Elizabeth causes a path of destruction in her wake as well.

Rabid Grannies (1988)

Gift: an old box with evil contents

Victoria (Anne-Marie Fox) and Elizabeth (Danielle Daven) Remington are elderly sisters and the matriarchs of their family. They invite their awful, money-grubbing relatives to their palatial home to celebrate their birthdays. Absent is Victoria and Elizabeth’s nephew Christopher who was ostracized from the family due to his involvement in satanic acts. In his stead, he sends a gift to his aunts as a peace offering. The gift is a beautiful wooden box that appears to be empty. Appearances can be deceiving. Within the box is a mist that escapes and infects the aunts’ drinks. After a few sips, Victoria and Elizabeth become demonically possessed monsters who messily murder their family.

Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (1989)

Gift: a possessed lamp

The horror of Amityville began in the house briefly owned by the Lutz family (previously owned by the DeFeo family). After three movies and some questionable continuity, a team of priests enters at the beginning of Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes and rids it of all evil influences. Or so they think. The evil has simply hidden itself inside a hideous lamp which is sold at a yard sale. The possessed lamp is gifted to a woman in California who, at the time of receiving the light fixture, is welcoming her daughter and three grandchildren into her home where they will all be living together. The lamp causes supernatural havoc as soon as it’s powered on, turning this gift of light into a curse of darkness.

Dead of Night (1945)

Gift: a haunted mirror

Joan (Googie Withers) gives her fiancé Peter (Ralph Michael) a fancy antique mirror for his birthday. Peter is unnerved when, instead of the room that he’s standing in, he sees his reflection standing inside a strange room he’s never seen before. No matter where the mirror is, he always sees the same room. Peter’s mental well-being continues to deteriorate after his and Joan’s wedding. Worried about Peter and searching for answers, Joan learns some disturbing stories about the previous owner of the mirror and his violent tendencies. It seems like Peter might be heading in the same direction.

Annabelle (2014)

Gift: a creepy porcelain doll

The background of the doll we all know as Annabelle is convoluted. Looking at the lineage of the doll, the demon that is attached to it, and the two people who are named Annabelle (one given the name at birth, and one who takes the name while possessed), it’s a mess. To simplify things, at the beginning of the 2014 movie titled Annabelle, the doll does not appear to be possessed until a murderer named Annabelle dies with the doll in her arms. Regardless of whether it’s possessed or not, the doll is dreadful to look at, and it is a shockingly terrible gift even in the best of scenarios. Astoundingly, the doll is gifted twice in the movie, once from a soon-to-be father to his expectant wife, and once from a mother to her medical-student daughter. Neither gift exchange ends well.