Krampus
A proper Christmas horror film, where the Christmas part carries real weight. Sustained menace and frightening creatures: a horror pick, not a family comedy.
Festive Factor 79 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
- 39 films
- 70–145 minutes
- 15 & 18 certificates, and Not BBFC rated
Why these belong together
Chosen for the same kind of night.
Christmas with the lights off: slashers in the snow and folk tales with a nasty streak, plus a few that are funnier than they are frightening. Scored on how festive they actually are, like everything else here, with a plain note on who should be watching.
Make tonight a good one
Find tonight’s film.
Showing all 39 films
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.
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.
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 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.
Rare Exports
For anyone who always suspected the old Christmas folklore was hiding something. Dark folklore, threat and unsettling imagery: read the film guide first.
Festive Factor 51 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. An adult slasher with disturbing calls, violence and sustained threat.
Festive Factor 37 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.
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.
Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!
The third Silent Night, Deadly Night drops the killer Santa for a stranger, slower road movie, and Christmas…
Festive Factor 28 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
A Creature Was Stirring
A blizzard traps a mother, her locked-away daughter and two intruders in a house glowing with sickly…
Festive Factor 26 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Calvaire
Calvaire is a Christmas film only in the bleakest sense.
Festive Factor 23 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
The Lodge
Christmas is the reason everyone ends up snowed in, and then the film strips it away piece by piece, which…
Festive Factor 23 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Silent Night, Bloody Night: The Homecoming
A cheap Welsh slasher that gets more from its Christmas deadline than its budget suggests.
Festive Factor 21 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation
The fourth Silent Night, Deadly Night drops the killer Santa entirely and puts a coven of witches and a…
Festive Factor 21 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Carnage for Christmas
Alice Maio Mackay was a teenager when she made this on next to no money, and both show.
Festive Factor 20 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Jack Frost
Not the Michael Keaton one, and mixing the two up would make for a very strange family evening.
Festive Factor 16 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Wind Chill
Two students who barely know each other share a lift home for Christmas, take a detour, and spend the night…
Festive Factor 15 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Krampus Unleashed
A Christmas devil film that forgets about Christmas almost as soon as the credits stop.
Festive Factor 13 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Silent Night, Zombie Night
Zombies overrun Los Angeles a week before Christmas, and the holiday barely gets a look in: a few lights and…
Festive Factor 11 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.
Hardware
A Christmas film only on the calendar.
Festive Factor 10 out of 100: A different kind of Christmas.Festive Factor measures Christmas spirit, not film quality or age suitability. How we score →
Telling ghost stories at Christmas is an old British habit, and a dark afternoon in a house full of relatives gives a film-maker plenty to work with.
These are scored on the same two numbers as every film here. Festive Factor measures how much of the film is Christmas, not how frightening it is, so a slasher set entirely on Christmas Eve can outscore a ghost story that only passes through December. They are ordered by Festive Factor.
The certificates run high, mostly 15 and 18. This is a list for grown-ups, and every film page says plainly who the film suits.
The long read on Christmas horror, in the film blog: Slay Bells: the Christmas horror films worth your December →
Another kind of night?
