The first Christmas movie ever, Santa Clause, was made in 1898. Hundreds if not thousands of holiday-themed films have been made since. In 2024 alone, Hallmark is releasing 41 new holiday movies, and Lifetime is chipping in another 12.
Most follow one of a few kind-hearted, family-friendly templates, focused on celebrating togetherness, discovering or re-kindling romance and / or the giving spirit of the holidays.
Others are downright weird. You’ll see just how twisted things can get below, as we pick the Weirdest Christmas Movie from Every Year from 1984 to 2024.
Gremlins (1984)
Although we must give some acknowledgement to the homicidal Santa romp Silent Night, Deadly Night – a movie that disgusted critic Gene Siskel to read the production crew’s names on the air while declaring, “Shame on you!” – top honors for the 1984’s weirdest Christmas movie goes to Gremlins. A small town teenage boy is given a rare and impossibly cute animal as a holiday gift. It’s a Mogwai named Gizmo, and it comes with very important care instructions, which the kid accidentally starts breaking in no time at all. This leads to the arrival of the evil titular gremlins, who bring chaos, mass destruction and several well-placed shots at the commercialization of the Christmas spirit.
Rocky IV (1985)
The ludicrously overblown fourth entry in the Rocky series casts Dolph Lundgren as a steroid and technology-boosted Russian Terminator, who Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky must defeat to avenge the (easily prevented) in-ring death of his friend Apollo Creed. The big showdown takes place on Christmas, and finds Balboa not only defeating his cyborg-like opponent but also single-handedly ending the Cold War. And if that’s still not weird enough can we remind you about Paulie’s life-size robot assistant?
Babes in Toyland (1986)
Drew Barrymore (four years after E.T., 14 before Charlie’s Angels) and Keanu Reeves (three years before Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) star in this 1986 made for TV movie that features plot points such as one-eyed monsters named Trollogs and “a flask containing distilled evil.”
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Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
1987 brought a wealth of holiday-themed or set movies, including the original Lethal Weapon, Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, A Muppet Family Christmas and Less Than Zero. But the fourth and mercifully so far final Jaws sequel takes the out-weirds them all by granting Ellen Brody (wife of now-dead police chief Martin, star of the first two movies) psychic powers that let her sense when the latest murderous great white shark is about to attack one of her family members. As you might guess from a movie named Jaws: The Revenge, that’s exactly what the big-toothed monster is up to, hence the movie’s laughable “This time, it’s personal” tagline. Alas, her powers arrive too late to save her son Sean, whose tortured screams for help are drowned out by Christmas carolers in the movie’s first attack scene.
Scrooged (1988)
Yes, the legendary Die Hard was released in 1988 — but that movie is awesome, not weird. Chevy Chase delivered a minor holiday-themed hit with Funny Farm, but was easily outclassed in terms of both quality and weirdness by the guy who replaced him on Saturday Night Live, Bill Murray. Ending a post-Ghostbusters hiatus, Murray delivered an updated and unhinged take on Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol that sharply skewered the television industry.
3615 Code Pere Noel (AKA Deadly Games) (1989)
Make no mistake, the best Christmas movie released in 1989 was Chase’s Christmas Vacation — and from cat food-enhanced jello to exploding sewer gas there’s plenty of weirdness to be found there. But the story of 3615 Code Pere Noel takes top prize for the year. Imagine Home Alone but make the danger, injuries and even deaths real and you’ll be on the right track. In fact, writer and director Rene Manzor once threatened legal action against the makers of Home Alone, alleging that they had copied his movie too closely.
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
1990 was a big year for holiday themed movies, with Home Alone, Die Hard 2 and Rocky V all featuring Christmas settings. But Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands creates an otherworldly and enchanting winter wonderland for the climax of Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder’s tale of two young lovers facing the ultimately insurmountable obstacles caused by his unique and dangerous appendages.
The Last Boy Scout (1991)
Okay admittedly, this is a bit of a reach — it would have helped if some of 1990’s holiday movies had been released a year later. But any movie that starts with a football player firing a gun IN THE MIDDLE OF A PLAY is categorically weird, and Bruce Willis’ daughter keeps drawing pictures of a rather evil-looking St. Nick, so there’s your winner by default.
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
Another Tim Burton movie, Batman Returns, could easily take 1992’s top spot. After all it features grown adults battling at Christmas time while dressed up as bats, cats and penguins. But let’s talk about how Kevin’s parents lost him AGAIN, this time in New York City. At this point somebody has to call child services, right?
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Tim Burton becomes our first two-time champion with 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, a stunning stop-motion animated movie about what happens with the king of Halloween decides he wants to expand his empire to include Christmas.
The Ref (1994)
You’d think a Christmas movie centered around Steve Martin as a suicide-prevention counselor would be weird enough to earn this spot, but Mixed Nuts was a limp miss. So 1994’s gold medal goes to The Ref, which stars Denis Leary as a criminal on the run who makes the mistake of taking pretty much the world’s worst couple — hello, Kevin Spacey! — hostage at Christmastime and winds up as a very unwilling (and profane) marriage counselor.
While You Were Sleeping (1995)
You won’t find a whole lot of weird romantic comedies on this list. But the concept of Sandra Bullock as a lonely Chicago Transit Authority token taker is a pretty good start. From there, While You Were Sleeping takes more bizarre twists and turns than the Second City’s train lines.
Santa With Muscles (1996)
1996’s biggest holiday movie found Arnold Schwarzenegger fighting to get his son the year’s most in-demand toy in Jingle All the Way, but another muscle-bound star easily out shined him in terms of weirdness. Pro wrestling legend Hulk Hogan stars in Santa With Muscles as a slimy millionaire who dresses up as Santa to hide from the police, and winds up battling an evil scientist who is seeking the magic crystals hidden below an orphanage.
Jack Frost (1997)
“One cold night… science and evil collide,” explains the trailer to 1997’s Jack Frost. The movie features a psychotic, wise-cracking mass murderer on the way to his own execution who gets exposed to chemicals that turn him into … a psychotic, wise-cracking, mass-murdering snowman.
Jack Frost (1998)
You’re not seeing double. The year after the horror movie version of Jack Frost was released came another movie with the exact same title and a very similar concept. Just replace “mass murderer” with “Michael Keaton as a rock star” and switch out the killing spree for some family-friendly but still undeniably strange father and son bonding.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Married at the time, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman spent more than a year filming director Stanley Kubrick’s final film. Eyes Wide Shut, which begins at a Christmas party, is an unsettling erotic drama centered around dreams of infidelity and a masked high society orgy. It isn’t nearly as good as the Kubrick apologists will have you believe, but it sure as hell is weird.
Jack Frost 2 (2000)
Jim Carrey’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas was the sixth-highest grossing movie of 2000, but the grossest holiday movie of the year was undoubtedly Jack Frost 2, which sees our favorite murderous snowman spreading winter weather, blood and wise cracks all over the Bahamas. Writer and director Michael Cooney’s plans to complete the trilogy with a Godzilla-sized Jack on the loose in a big city have sadly yet to come to fruition.
Sorry, here’s a lump of coal (2001)
Sorry, Santa doesn’t have a weird movie for you from 2001. About the best we can do is a very conventional made-for-TV pile of Whoopi Goldberg-starring glop named Call Me Clause, and that just ain’t good enough. Stick with us, we’ve got a triple feature coming up in a little bit.
Friday After Next (2002)
A quick serious note – if you haven’t seen 2002’s Hugh Grant, Nicholas Hault and Toni Collette-starring About a Boy, please rectify that because it’s fantastic. Okay, back to weirdness: The third and so far final movie in the Friday series finds Ice Cube battling to get his rent money and Christmas presents back from a robber dressed as Santa. And yes, far too much of the movie takes place in Willie Jones’ bathroom.
Bad Santa (2003)
2003 brought two big holiday-themed hits: Will Ferrell’s Elf and the romantic comedy Love Actually. There was also a direct-to-TV Christmas Vacation sequel focused on Randy Quaid’s lowbrow Cousin Eddie. But the year is best remembered for one of the darkest, funniest and yes, weirdest holiday classics of all time. Bad Santa featured Billy Bob Thorton as an alcoholic, foul-mouthed, womanizing safe cracker whose life of crime and gluttony gets upended by a hapless kid with the unbelievable name of Thurman Merman.
Surviving Christmas (2004)
If 2004’s holiday movies were attempting to replicate the darkness of Bad Santa, they failed. Instead we got two rather conventional redemption tales — Tim Allen’s lame Christmas With the Kranks and the unquestionably worse but also slightly weirder Surviving Christmas. The movie finds Ben Affleck’s Drew Latham paying James Gandolfini and his family a quarter-million dollars to pretend they are his loving family in order to impress (and fool) his girlfriend. To be clear, we’re barely above the Call Me Claus line here.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
After Robert Downey Jr.’s hapless thief Harry Lockhart gets busted while trying to steal a Christmas present for his kid, a strange turn of events whisks him off to Hollywood, which is celebrating the holiday season in its own superficial way. Lockhart is immediately immersed into a hilarious and inventively oddball detective caper that both subverts and celebrates the genre’s conventions.
Deck the Halls (2006)
Yes, we’re going to continue to ignore Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause series, which released its third and worst movie in 2006. Instead we’ll take a sharp turn into weird and bad with Deck the Halls. The movie wastes both Danny DeVito and an interesting premise — two neighbors losing touch with the holiday spirit while trying to out-do each other’s Christmas lights display — with a convoluted plot and terrible jokes. “You won’t believe how excruciatingly awful this movie is,” critic Richard Roeper wrote. “It is bad in a way that will cause unfortunate viewers to huddle in the lobby afterwards, hugging in small groups, consoling one another with the knowledge that it’s over, it’s over — thank God, it’s over.”
You decide (2007)
There’s two candidates here: Vince Vaughn as Santa Claus’ troublemaking brother in the conventionally unconventional Fred Claus, or the intentionally and horrifically offensive A Kitten for Hitler, a short film in which a young boy tries to get the Nazi leader to change his evil ways with a Christmas gift. Do yourself a favor and don’t read how terribly his plan ends. You’ll do just fine without Fred Claus, too.
Step Brothers (2008)
The Christmas season comes up twice in the delightfully immature Step Brothers, which turns Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly loose as directionless, unemployed man-children who just might do more damage as best friends than they do as bitter enemies.
12 Men of Christmas (2009)
…in which a jaded big city publicist convinces the men of a small town rescue squad to pose half-naked for a fundraising calendar. Will the media’s objectification of men ever cease?
Rare Exports (2010)
The Finnish Rare Exports is a highly twisted take on the legend of Santa Claus, as two young boys must save the kidnapped children of their village from an evil St. Nick and his hordes of equally unjolly elves. You’re better off going into this one spoiler-free, but trust Roger Ebert when he calls it “a wonderful lump of coal for your stocking.”
A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)
Imagine if either Cheech or Chong gave up smoking pot? That’s the central issue that has separated former stoner buddies Harold and Kumar feuding here. While they struggle to replace a prized Christmas tree that’s gone up in flames, an apparently immortal Neil Patrick Harris and a bong-toking Santa Claus work some holiday magic to truly reunite the two friends.
Silent Night (2012)
After sending pieces of coal to his own personal naughty list, a homicidal “Santa Claus” mows down the victims with Christmas lights, a cattle prod, a woodchipper and a flame thrower. Malcolm McDowell elevates this remake of 1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night with a humorously scene-chewing turn as the town’s sheriff.
Alone for Christmas (2013)
That’s right, it’s Home Alone … but with a pack of dogs left alone to protect the house from thieves while the family is away for the holidays. Apologies to Paul Rudd and Paul Giamatti’s All is Bright, Iron Man 3 and the Norwegian slasher film Christmas Cruelty!
Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever (2014)
They took the real-life feline from all those Grumpy Cat memes and gave her a starring role in a movie. Audrey Plaza provided her voice. No further questions, right?
Krampus (2015)
With apologies to William Shatner’s inspired turn as the alcoholic radio DJ helping to weave the four stories in A Christmas Horror Story together, 2015’s weirdest movie honors go to Krampus. The modern day cult classic finds an ancient demon punishing a suburban town with the help of an army of evil toys, after one of its young residents loses his Christmas spirit.
Bad Santa 2 (2016)
Let’s be clear: Bad Santa 2 is nowhere near as good as its predecessor. In fact it’s depressingly awful, with all of the nastiness but none of the wit of the first movie. But it’s certainly weirder than the year’s more traditional attempts at big-screen holiday naughtiness, Why Him? and Office Christmas Party.
A Bad Mom’s Christmas (2017)
2016’s Bad Moms was a raunchy, often hilarious, and sometimes even insightful look at the pressures felt by modern mothers. The gang all returned for a holiday sequel that delivered on its promise to “Put the ass back in Christmas” with a particularly outrageous performance by Kathryn Hahn.
Triple Feature: Await Further Instuctions / Anna and the Apocalypse / Santa Jaws (2018)
You’d think a movie named Santa Jaws (which by the way, is exactly as self-explanatory as you’d expect) would have this all sewn up, right? But 2018 offered a trio of warped holiday features. We also got Await Further Instructions, in which a feuding family wakes up on Christmas day with their house covered in a mysterious black substance, and the inventive zombie musical Anna and the Apocalypse.
The Lodge (2019)
(Spoiler alert) Quick warning to all the kids out there crafting exotic schemes to drive their soon-to-be stepmothers crazy during the holiday season: Make sure you don’t send her TOO far over the edge.
Fatman (2020)
Mel Gibson stars as a gun-toting, highly jaded Chris Cringle, who is the subject of an assassination attempt cooked up by one particularly naughty child. None of this is played for laughs.
Red Snow (2021)
A struggling vampire romance novelist encounters a real-deal bloodsucker during her Christmas retreat at a remote cabin. Like may other young relationships, they get along just fine until his friends get involved…
Violent Night (2022)
It had to happen: a John Wick-styled Santa Clause movie. David Harbour is perfectly cast as grumpy and booze-loving St. Nick, whose long-dormant combat training is put to good use when a young child is threatened by would-be Christmas robbers.
It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023)
Although the action and kills are a bit stock, this fantastically-titled Christmas horror movie puts a very creative multiverse-style spin on the James Stewart classic It’s a Wonderful Life.
Terrifier 3 (2024)
Confession: I haven’t watched this, I’m never watching this, I tapped out on this level of horror right in the middle of the second Saw movie. But I’ve seen, heard and read more than enough to know that Terrifier 3 is sure as %$#%$ weirder than Red One.
The Worst Christmas Movies Ever
Ho ho ho — these movies stink.
