25+ Christmas Horror Movies: An Advent Calendar of Holiday Terror

What is it about the Christmas season that makes it such a perfect fit for cinematic murder and mayhem? Some may argue that it’s about juxtaposing joyous celebrations with horrific scenarios. But really, it’s a lot more simple than that. For horror fans, watching a scary movie is a joyous celebration.

1. Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Silent Night, Deadly Night is a must-watch classic of the Christmas-horror genre. Five-year-old Billy Chapman witnesses the assault and murder of his parents by a man in a Santa Claus costume. Thirteen years later, Billy (Robert Brian Wilson) gets a job at a toy store where he is asked/told to fill in for the store’s Santa. The Santa suit, combined with an event that triggers memories of his trauma as a kid, causes Billy to snap and begin a Christmas Eve murder spree.

2. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

Are we beginning this horror-film advent calendar with the entire Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise? Absolutely. The first two movies in the series get the most love, but they’re all worth watching. Part two follows Ricky (Eric Freeman), the younger brother of the killer from the first movie. Ricky follows in his brother’s footsteps, and on Christmas Eve he tells the story of how he became a killer before escaping from a mental institution for one more kill. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is amazingly cheesy, and if you’re familiar with the “Garbage Day” scene that went viral a few years ago, then you’ll know exactly what to expect from this movie.

3. Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out (1989)

Silent Night, Deadly Night 3 continues the story of formerly-Santa-suited killer Ricky. It’s a few years after the ending of the previous movie, and Ricky is in a coma. A doctor attempts to use the psychic abilities of a blind young woman, Laura, to contact Ricky mind-to-mind. She does make contact, but all that accomplishes is that Ricky and Laura are now mentally linked, and he follows her, her brother, and her brother’s girlfriend when they take a family trip on Christmas Eve. Silent Night, Deadly Night 3 isn’t as fun as the previous movies in the series, but watching Bill Moseley (as Ricky) stagger around with an exposed brain is entertaining.

4. Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation (1990)

This is a weird one. Part three was a departure from the style of the first two movies in the Silent Night, Deadly Night series, but Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation is a complete abandonment of everything that came before it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though. If you like stories about witches, dark rituals, lots of bugs, and grotesque special effects by the legendary Screaming Mad George, then Initiation might be just what you’re looking for. The story is about Kim (Neith Hunter), a woman trying to make a break for herself as a journalist despite her chauvinistic boss. She begins investigating a story of a woman’s apparent spontaneous combustion, and that leads her to the aforementioned bugs, witches, and grotesqueries.

5. Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker (1991)

In this, the last of the original run of Silent Night, Deadly Night movies, the franchise has fully embraced the idea of becoming an anthology series. It also steers back into the Christmas trimmings that were largely missing from the previous movie. Silent Night, Deadly Night 5 features a plethora of killer toys, and a story about a mother and her son who are at the center of all the violence. Interestingly, despite this sequel not following the events of Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation, a few of the actors from that movie make cameos in part five as different characters who happen to have the same names as their previous characters.

6. Silent Night (2012)

Silent Night is billed as a remake of the 1984 Silent Night, Deadly Night, but it feels more like an homage. Certain moments and lines of dialogue from the original are reused here, but the overall story is quite different. That’s not a bad thing though. Silent Night is about a mysterious masked killer in a Santa Claus suit who goes on a Christmas-Eve murder spree. Sheriff James Cooper (Malcolm McDowell) and Deputy Aubrey Bradimore (Jaime King) are on the case, but Aubrey soon learns that she might have a connection to the killer.

7. Black Christmas (1974)

Black Christmas is everything a Christmas horror movie should be. For starters, the glow of the multi-colored lights set against a bleak and frigid winter sets a perfect holiday mood. Additionally, the various characters (led by Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder) are instantly likable, making the fear of their possible deaths more emotional. Also, the plot is based on the well-known urban legend of a killer calling from inside the house, giving the movie a nostalgic appeal even if it’s your first time watching it. But more than anything, Black Christmas is perfect because it’s also one of the greatest slasher movies ever made.

8. Night Train Murders (1975)

Night Train Murders is one of the numerous exploitation movies that was inspired by The Last House on the Left (1972), so if you’re uncomfortable with some of the more brutal aspects of that movie, then you might want to skip this one. The story in Night Train Murders follows two young women—Margaret (Irene Miracle) and Lisa (Laura D’Angelo)—as they take a train from Germany into Italy to stay with Lisa’s parents during the Christmas holiday. Unfortunately for them, a pair of criminals board their train and turn this trip into a horrifyingly tortuous experience.

9. Jack Frost (1997)

When a murderer named Jack Frost is exposed to genetic research chemicals in an accident on the way to his execution, he becomes one with the snow covering the ground. With his newfound ability to become water, ice, and snow, Jack disguises himself as a snowman in order to get revenge on the sheriff who arrested him. Jack Frost is dumb slasher fun from an era of goofy slashers that was beginning to dwindle under the power of the new wave of meta-slashers.

10. Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022)

From writer/director Joe Begos (director of the John-Carpenter-esque VFW), Christmas Bloody Christmas is about a robotic Santa Claus that goes on a vicious killing spree on Christmas Eve. Tori (Riley Dandy), the owner of a local record store, just wants to get drunk and have a good time when robo-Santa violently changes her plans. Expect lots of grindhouse holiday fun in this one.

11. Blood Beat (1983)

Blood Beat is difficult to describe without making it sound completely nonsensical. It is about a guy and his girlfriend who visit the guy’s family for Christmas. Right away there are some strange supernatural happenings affecting the girlfriend and the guy’s mother. One thing leads to another, and much later in the movie there is a magical glowing samurai. Trying to explain how it gets from point A to point B is useless, so just trust that Blood Beat is a Christmas movie, it’s full of supernatural horror, and it’s really fun for fans of strange films.

12. The Dorm that Dripped Blood (1982)

Working over the holiday break is never fun, but that’s the situation for a group of college students in The Dorm that Dripped Blood. While everyone else leaves to enjoy Christmas, five students stay on campus to clear out a condemned dormitory building before it is torn down. As if holiday-time manual labor wasn’t bad enough, there is a killer in their midst picking people off one by one. The Dorm that Dripped Blood is pretty standard as far as 1980s slashers go, which is to say that it has some good blood and violence.

13. P2 (2007)

In P2, Angela is working late on Christmas Eve when she finally decides to head home. She is the last to leave except for one person… the security guard in the parking garage. The guard, Thomas, wants to spend the holiday with Angela, and he won’t take “no” for an answer. P2 is a surprisingly tense and effective thriller.

14. ATM (2012)

For many people, stopping at an ATM isn’t something they think much about. It’s an errand at best, and an inconvenience at worst. But for three coworkers stopping at an ATM on the way home from their office Christmas party, stopping at an ATM is a fight for survival. All three of them end up trapped inside an enclosed ATM booth with a violent stranger blocking their only way out. Now, with the booth’s heater busted and nobody around to help late on this holiday winter night, they can either freeze to death or take their chances against a killer.

15. Dead End (2003)

For many people, the Christmas season includes a road trip with your family. For the family in Dead End, it’s the last road trip they’ll ever want to go on. On Christmas Eve, the Harrington family takes a shortcut on their way to grandma’s house. The shortcut never seems to end, and the family is subjected to a series of increasingly bizarre and deadly events over the course of the night. Dead End is a great underseen movie that is gradually being discovered by new fans over the years.

16. Wind Chill (2007)

Emily Blunt stars in Wind Chill as a college student who agrees to a rideshare with a male student (Ashton Holmes) so she can get home for the holidays. The trip was only supposed to take a few hours, but a “shortcut” taken by the guy strands the two of them far away from the main road. With zero trust between them, and with strange things happening around them, Wind Chill is a chilling supernatural thriller with some interesting twists and turns.

17. Terrifier 3 (2024)

Moving away from the Halloween setting of the previous movies, Terrifier 3 is set during Christmas. It picks up Sienna (Lauren LaVera) and Art the Clown’s (David Howard Thornton) paths as they come back together years after the events of the previous movie. Still struggling with the events of the past, Sienna visits some of the only remaining family she has. Meanwhile, Art and the possessed Victoria Heyes wake from hibernation and discover the joys of the holiday season. This threequel expands on the lore of Art and Sienna’s connection which was only touched on previously, and it features an even meaner and more entertaining cavalcade of gory slaughter.

18. The Leech (2022)

In the spirit of charity, a priest, Father David (Graham Skipper), invites a man he finds sleeping on a church pew into his home. The man, Terry (Jeremy Gardner), needs a place to stay, and it isn’t long before his girlfriend Lexi (Taylor Zaudtke) comes to stay with him. The priest’s patience and faith are put to the test as his guests indulge in debauchery, and it all leads to a wild finale in this darkly comedic psychological horror flick.

19. Inside (aka À l’intérieur) (2007)

On Christmas Eve, a pregnant woman, Sarah (Alysson Paradis), fights to survive a home invasion by a woman (Béatrice Dalle) who wants to steal Sarah’s unborn child. Inside is a French horror film released during the wave of New French Extremity which also includes movies such as High Tension (2003) and Irreversible (2002). Like the films it’s associated with, Inside is brutally violent. Even though it might seem like Inside is only superficially linked to Christmas, when you consider the idea of enduring a trial on Christmas Eve followed by a type of birth in the early-morning hours of Christmas day, you can feel secure in knowing that watching Inside on Christmas Eve is a perfectly acceptable way of celebrating the holiday.

20. Better Watch Out (2016)

Better Watch Out is a darkly humorous psychological horror movie. If John Hughes and Wes Craven collaborated on a film, something like this might be the result. During the Christmas season, Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) is babysitting 12-year-old Luke (Levi Miller). Luke has a crush on Ashley, but his plans to get closer to her are put on hold when an armed intruder breaks in. Not everything is as it seems though, and the terror Ashley experiences this holiday night is already a lot closer than she thinks.

21. The Children (2008)

Children can be a lot to handle at any time. But put a bunch of them together during the holiday season? Nightmare. And it’s certainly nightmarish for the parents in The Children when their own kids start acting in homicidal ways. Does their behavior have something to do with the unusual illness they all share? Will there be enough time to find out before the children kill everyone? The Children is surprisingly violent and quite bleak.

22. The Curse of the Cat People (1944)

What’s Christmas without a good ghost story? Not a very good Christmas, that’s what. So this year, why not watch one of the more overlooked and interesting sequels ever made. Cat People (1942) is a well-known horror classic, and The Curse of the Cat People (1942) takes the threads of the original and weaves them into something completely unique. The story centers on young Amy Reed (Ann Carter), the daughter of Oliver (Kent Smith) and Alice (Jane Randolph) from the first film. Amy is a lonely girl, but she finds a friend in the spirit of someone who was very close to her father, but who died before Amy was born.

23. A Christmas Tale (2005)

A Christmas Tale might be the best hidden gem on this list. It is a Spanish film from director Paco Plaza, the director of Rec (2007), Verónica (2017) and other superb horror movies. The story in A Christmas Tale is about children who discover a woman in a Santa costume trapped in a well. The kids find out that the woman is a thief who just stole a large sum of money, and that gets them to thinking about the money and how they can best take advantage of the situation they’ve found themselves in.

24. The Day of the Beast (1995)

In The Day of the Beast, a priest discovers that the Antichrist will be born at midnight on Christmas Eve. Making the discovery mere days before the event, the priest travels to Madrid where he intends to commit as many sins as he can. His plan: to sin enough to sell his soul to the Devil, thereby allowing him to find the location of the Antichrist’s birth. The priest struggles in his quest, so he enlists the aid of a heavy-metal fan (since metal is the Devil’s music) and a charlatan who hosts a supernatural TV show. The Day of the Beast is a delightful fish-out-of-water movie that is also one of the relatively few religion-based Christmas horror movies.

25. Christmas Evil (1980)

In a scene that could be the beginning of just about any generic slasher movie, Christmas Evil begins with a young boy being traumatized by witnessing his parents engage in romantic acts while his father is wearing a Santa suit. However, the movie plays out as more of a psychological horror movie rather than a typical stalk-and-slash plot. Three decades later, the boy, Harry (Brandon Maggart), is grown and working in a toy factory. Harry is taken advantage of and seen as weird by everyone around him, and his unhealthy obsession with Santa Claus leads him to commit some truly horrible acts as Christmas approaches.

More Christmas Horror Movies

Still looking to bring more joy to your horror-filled season? Collected here are a few more horror movies related in some way to the Christmas season. Some are good, some are strange, and some are only barely related to the season, but they’re all worth watching.

• Santa Claus vs. The Devil (1959) – The Devil sends a demon to Earth to turn children against Santa, but Merlin helps Santa overcome the evil. Also known by the title Santa Claus.
• Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) – A Martian leader orders the kidnapping of Santa.
• Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1972) – An American widow living in the English countryside has a big Christmas party at her home for local orphans, but Christmas murder and mayhem ensue.
• Tales from the Crypt (1972) – One of the stories in this anthology horror movie is about a serial killer dressed as Santa (which was also the subject of the first episode of the Tales from the Crypt television series).
• Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972) – A series of mysterious murders begins when a man inherits a house that used to be a mental asylum.
• To All A Good Night (1980) – Directed by David Hess (star of The Last House on the Left, 1972), this slasher movie is about a killer in a Santa suit slaughtering students at a school for girls.
• Gremlins (1984) – Gremlins is a classic of family-friendly Christmas horror.
• Don’t Open Till Christmas (1984) – A killer targets anyone dressed in Santa’s suit in this British slasher movie.
• Deadly Games (aka Dial Code Santa Claus) (1989) – This is sort of like Home Alone, but much darker.
• Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman (2000) – A serial killing snowman goes on a rampage in a tropical location.
• American Psycho (2000) – A satire of 1980s yuppie culture, American Psycho stars Christian Bale as the titular psycho who is a businessman by day and a serial killer in his free time.
• Calvaire (aka The Ordeal, 2004) – During the Christmas season, a musician is stranded in a small town with some disturbing inhabitants.
• Santa’s Slay (2005) – Bill Goldberg plays a demonic Santa Claus who kills people after his curse of being forced to deliver presents ends.
• The Gingerdead Man (2005) – A witch who revives a dead serial killer played by Gary Busey. However, the killer is turned into a gingerbread man and sets out for revenge.
• Black Christmas (2006) – It’s the second best movie titled Black Christmas.
• Caesar and Otto’s Deadly Xmas (2012) – A comedy-horror about two brothers hired to play Santa and his elf at a store. However, a fellow store Santa develops a vendetta against them.
• Krampus (2015) – Krampus visits the family of a boy who loses his Christmas spirit in this fun monster movie.
• Mercy Christmas (2017) – A man meets the perfect woman and celebrates Christmas with her family. However, it turns out he’s meant to be their dinner in this cannibal holiday flick.
• The Lodge (2019) – Riley Keough stars as a woman with a difficult past whose present is made shockingly difficult by the children of her fiancé.
• I Trapped the Devil (2019) – A man and his wife visit the man’s brother for the holidays, but the brother has a secret: he’s trapped the Devil in his basement.
• Letters to Satan Claus (2020) – It’s a holiday rom-com, with the Devil.
• The Advent Calendar (2021) – A wheelchair-bound former dancer is given an advent calendar, and each compartment has a supernatural surprise.
• It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023) – In a spin on the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life, this slasher flick tells the story of a young woman who—one year after she stops a killer—wishes she’d never been born.
• The Sacrifice Game (2023) – Students and their caretakers left behind at school during the holiday break are forced to endure the tortures of a cult with sinister plans.
• A Creature Was Stirring (2023) – Two strangers threaten the delicate balance of the household of a woman taking care of her daughter’s mysterious affliction.
• There’s Something in the Barn (2023) – An American family disturbs the elf that lives in the barn of their new Norwegian home, so the elf brings his friends to reign terror down on the family.

Further Reading

• Krampus Movies
• Winter Horror Movies
• The Best Thanksgiving Horror Movies
• The Best Movies to Watch in November: The Horrors of Shopping
• Valentine’s Day Horror Movies
• Easter Horror Movies