Scrooged
A PG not to be trusted with children: sour, sharp and haunted by some genuinely nasty imagery. The middle hour is vicious in the best way.
Festive Factor 89 out of 100: Christmas at its heart.
After their bedtime
The best Christmas films for adults
Sharp comedy, messy relationships and Christmas with an edge.
- 60 films
- 74–159 minutes
- PG to 18 certificates, and Not BBFC rated
Why these belong together
Chosen for the same kind of night.
The Christmas films that wait until the children have gone up: swearing, violence, cruelty, or simply two hours of grown-up relationships nobody under twelve will sit through. Scored on how festive they actually are, like everything else here, with a plain note on why each one is for later.
Make tonight a good one
Find tonight’s film.
Showing all 60 films
Love Actually
Three good films, two passable ones and a couple that have aged badly, all set in London in December. Worth it for the strands that work.
Festive Factor 83 out of 100: Christmas at its heart.
Violent Night
Exactly what the title promises, and far more festive than a title like that suggests.
Festive Factor 82 out of 100: Christmas at its heart.
Krampus
A proper Christmas horror film, and a rare one where the Christmas part carries real weight.
Festive Factor 79 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Bad Santa
The meanest Christmas film anyone has made with a straight face, and funnier than a plot this bleak should…
Festive Factor 66 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Die Hard
The office party that settles the argument. Set at Christmas, driven by Christmas, and a 15 with a body count.
Festive Factor 63 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Last Christmas
A soft, drizzly London romcom with the George Michael songbook stitched through it, and more sincere than…
Festive Factor 62 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
The Holiday Sitter
Hallmark's first Christmas film built around a gay couple, and the quiet achievement is that it is otherwise…
Festive Factor 61 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
EXmas
Two exes turn up for the same family Christmas and neither will leave, so they compete for the family's…
Festive Factor 60 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Santa's Slay
A slasher with a cracker-joke sense of humour, and it knows exactly how daft it is.
Festive Factor 57 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
The Ref
Made for anyone who has sat through a family Christmas dinner and needed a lie-down afterwards.
Festive Factor 57 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Silent Night, Deadly Night
A cheap, mean slasher that knew exactly which button to press, and the button was Father Christmas.
Festive Factor 56 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
The Family Stone
A family homecoming that happens to fall at Christmas, and Thanksgiving could have carried it with very…
Festive Factor 56 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
There's Something in the Barn
An American family inherit a farm in the Norwegian mountains and ignore the old rules about the little elf…
Festive Factor 56 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Slay Belles
A crowd-funded horror comedy that pits a retired, foul-mouthed Santa against Krampus on Christmas Eve, and…
Festive Factor 55 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
A Biltmore Christmas
A Hallmark film about remaking an old Christmas classic, which sounds like a snake eating its own tinsel and…
Festive Factor 54 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
A Christmas Horror Story
A portmanteau of horror shorts cut together across one Christmas Eve, and like most anthologies it is only…
Festive Factor 54 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
The Night Before
A stoner comedy that happens to fall on Christmas Eve, and it turns out fonder of the season than its…
Festive Factor 54 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Fatman
Mel Gibson plays a weary, hard-drinking Father Christmas who takes a military contract to keep his failing…
Festive Factor 53 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Father Christmas Is Back
Plenty of famous British faces, John Cleese and Elizabeth Hurley among them, gathered at a grand country…
Festive Factor 52 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Happiest Season
A coming-out story that happens to be set at Christmas, and a warmer one than its premise suggests.
Festive Factor 52 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
The Holiday
Rated 12A, but two hours of adult relationships will lose anyone under about thirteen. A cottage fantasy for the flat days after Christmas.
Festive Factor 52 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Rare Exports
Deadpan and properly strange, this is the Christmas film for anyone who always suspected the old folklore…
Festive Factor 51 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Christmas at Castle Hart
Lacey Chabert, an Irish castle and a case of mistaken identity: if you know Hallmark, you know the shape…
Festive Factor 49 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Goodbye June
Kate Winslet's debut behind the camera is a deathbed comedy, and it earns its laughs.
Festive Factor 49 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Silent Night, Deadly Night
A remake that keeps the red suit and the grim childhood prologue, then rebuilds everything else as an advent…
Festive Factor 49 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Bad Santa 2
More than a decade on, Thornton puts the suit back on and the film mostly repeats the first one, only louder.
Festive Factor 47 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Deathcember
Twenty-four horror shorts behind twenty-four Advent doors is a good idea, and the trouble is that you get…
Festive Factor 47 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Love the Coopers
Four generations of one American family converge on a single Christmas Eve dinner, and every one of them is…
Festive Factor 47 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Office Christmas Party
Christmas here is a deadline rather than a feeling: save the branch before the holidays or everyone is out.
Festive Factor 47 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Meet Me Next Christmas
A Netflix romcom built around a gig, with Christmas Eve as the deadline.
Festive Factor 46 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Trading Places
Cruel set-up, satisfying revenge and two BAFTA-winning performances. One sequence has aged very badly, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Festive Factor 46 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Black Christmas
A remake that trades the original's slow, creeping dread for gore, and loses most of what made Bob Clark's…
Festive Factor 44 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Eyes Wide Shut
Kubrick's last film uses Christmas the way a grand hotel uses a lobby tree: it is in almost every room and…
Festive Factor 44 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Once Upon a Time at Christmas
A slasher built on a carol: two killers in Santa and Mrs Claus costumes work through a snowy small town one…
Festive Factor 44 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Single All the Way
A man tired of turning up single to his family's Christmas talks his best friend into posing as his…
Festive Factor 44 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Toys of Terror
A box of 1980s-style playthings wakes up in an old children's clinic at Christmas and starts picking off the…
Festive Factor 44 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Don't Open Till Christmas
A British slasher in which somebody spends the run-up to Christmas murdering every man in London who puts on…
Festive Factor 43 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Mercy Christmas
A lonely office worker gets the Christmas invitation he has always wanted and finds out too late what the…
Festive Factor 43 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Mother Krampus
Released here as 12 Deaths of Christmas, this is a micro-budget British folk-horror slasher, and despite the…
Festive Factor 43 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Oh. What. Fun.
Michelle Pfeiffer plays a mother who does all of Christmas for a family who never say thank you, until they…
Festive Factor 41 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Terrifier 3
A slasher that has worked out a Santa suit makes a very good disguise, and not much more about Christmas…
Festive Factor 40 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
A Merry Scottish Christmas
Less a romance than a family reunion with a romance attached, which is its charm.
Festive Factor 38 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Christmas Bloody Christmas
Joe Begos wanted to make a killer-robot film and put it in a Santa suit, and his glee is all over the screen.
Festive Factor 38 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Black Christmas
The Christmas horror film a lot of later slashers borrowed from, and it still unsettles.
Festive Factor 37 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Lethal Weapon
A cop thriller that happens to be set at Christmas, and it wears the season more lightly than Die Hard does.
Festive Factor 37 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Die Hard 2
The sequel moves the Christmas Eve siege to a snowbound airport and turns the volume up.
Festive Factor 36 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Eight Crazy Nights
A Hanukkah film in a Christmas coat, and a crude one.
Festive Factor 36 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Red Christmas
A family Christmas reunion turns into a siege, and the film takes the reunion more seriously than you might…
Festive Factor 36 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Anna and the Apocalypse
A Scottish zombie musical set in the run-up to Christmas, which sounds like a dare and mostly pays off.
Festive Factor 34 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Deadly Little Christmas
A micro-budget slasher that borrows the shape of Halloween almost scene for scene, then moves it to December…
Festive Factor 34 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
I Trapped the Devil
A small, patient horror film that borrows Christmas mostly for its lights.
Festive Factor 34 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Red Snow
A vampire romance novelist takes in a wounded bat at Christmas and gets far more research than she bargained…
Festive Factor 34 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Christmas Cruelty!
A Norwegian no-budget slasher that spends an hour watching a group of friends drink, bicker and buy a tree…
Festive Factor 33 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Hosts
Hosts spends a long time looking like a fraught but ordinary Christmas Eve dinner, and that patience is its…
Festive Factor 33 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Santa Claws
A shot-on-video slasher from John Russo, co-writer of Night of the Living Dead, in which the obsessive…
Festive Factor 33 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
The Shop Around the Corner
Two shop clerks bicker all day and, without knowing it, write each other love letters by night.
Festive Factor 33 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
This Is Christmas
A gentle British ensemble piece with a premise anyone who commutes will recognise: a carriage of regulars…
Festive Factor 33 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Holidate
A year of holidays with Christmas only at either end, so it counts as festive on a technicality.
Festive Factor 32 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
All Through the House
A slasher in a Father Christmas mask, made by people who clearly love the eighties originals and want you to…
Festive Factor 31 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.Festive Factor measures Christmas spirit, not film quality or age suitability. How we score →
Grown-up does not mean gloomy. Most of these are comedies, and what they share is that you would not choose them with a six-year-old on the sofa.
The certificates vary more than you might expect, and a PG can still be a grown-ups' film: the notes say where the rating undersells it. They are ordered by Festive Factor, so the most Christmassy are at the top.
Another kind of night?