If you’re ahorror moviefanatic, you want horror all year round, and several studios and directors are very good at ensuring you’re well-fed. However, when it comes to the holidays, whether that be Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year’s, or, of course, Halloween, you might want a specifically themed horror movie to tie into the celebration.
There are plenty of classics as well as more modern horror movies that keep the spirit of the holidays alive. Most of these will be slashers, but then you also have some that showcase body horror, Gothic horror, and horror-comedy elements. Some of the films below can also be less obvious in that they are centered around a holiday.
Where To Stream
Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz
Riley Keough, Jaeden Martell, Lia McHugh, Richard Armitage, Alicia Silverstone, Danny Keough, and Lola Skye Reid
2019
75%
6
Paramount+ with Showtime
Christmas with a side of masterfully slow-burning, snowy isolation horror is what’s under the treewith Neon’s The Lodge. The moral of this holiday horror film is don’t mess with the wrong person, who, in this specific case, is a soon-to-be stepmother named Grace and the only surviving member of her cult’s mass suicide.
Grace and her fiancée’s kids are snowed in at the family lodge, where they would traditionally spend Christmas before the siblings tragically lost their mother to suicide. The brother and sister continually misbehave and don’t want to give Grace a chance, so she slowly starts to lose her sanity from being around them, leading to devastating consequences and an eerie twist ending.
George Mihalka
My Bloody Valentine (1981)
Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier, Neil Affleck, Keith Knight, Alf Humphreys, Cynthia Dale, Helene Udy, Rob Stein, Thomas Kovacs, Terry Waterland, and Peter Cowper
58%
6.2
Patrick Lussier
2009 Remake
Jensen Ackles, Jaime King, Kerr Smith, Betsy Rue, Edi Gathegi, Tom Atkins, Kevin Tighe, Megan Boone, Karen Baum, Todd Farmer, and Richard John Walters
62%
5.4
Amazon Prime Video with MovieSphere+, Tubi, Pluto TV, Plex, The Roku Channel
There have been a lot of Valentine’s Day slashers that tried to work but didn’t get much traction or acclaim, but My Bloody Valentine was a unique V-Day slasher idea that was the first of its kind and also the best of its kind. The series centers around a vengeful miner who goes on a killing spree on Valentine’s Day and packages his victims' hearts in chocolate boxes.
The original 1981 film is an iconic slasher film with a compelling whodunnit mystery about The Miner’s identity. The 2009 remake changes the story to throw you for a loop and gives a new, unexpected identity for The Miner.
Tim Story
Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Dewayne Perkins, Melvin Gregg, Antoinette Robinson, X Mayo, Sinqua Walls, Yvonne Orji, Jay Pharoah, and Diedrich Bader
2023
87%
The Roku Channel
One of the most original and satirical horror-comedy films has to be The Blackening. The movie uses the holiday of Juneteenth to tell a whodunnit tale in the vein of Scream, with a group of friends trapped in a game by a masked crossbow-wielding assailant.
The game is called ‘The Blackening’ and it’s a satirical trivia tabletop game poking fun at pop culture and how it represents Black characters, with even a racist caricature at the center of the board. If they fail a question or decline to respond, one of the group will be eliminated by the killer, but they have to serve up the ‘Blackest’ person to be sacrificed, which leads to hilarious moments.
Robert Eggers
Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Ineson, and Simon McBurney
2024
84%
7.2
Peacock
The Oscar-nominatedfourth film by Robert Eggers, Nosferatu,was actually a Christmas Day release, and takes place during the holiday season in 1830s Germany. It’s snowy, there’s a Christmas tree in the Harding house, and the Gothic atmosphere, lighting, and cinematography give it the perfect haunting wintertime feel.
Nosferatu is a 1922 unofficial Dracula adaptation now reimagined by Eggers for a modern audience,with some notes from Coppola’s Dracula. There are some powerful performances, with Skarsgård’s titular vampire (with his incredible appearance and menacing voice) and Willem Dafoe’s occult professor being the big highlights. Like The Lighthouse, Nosferatu’s ending shot will be ingrained in your memory as well.
Eli Roth
Nell Verlaque, Patrick Dempsey, Gina Gershon, Ty Olsson, Karen Cliche, Lynne Griffin, Rick Hoffman, Milo Manheim, Addison Rae, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Jenna Warren, Shailyn Griffin, Mika Amonsen, Amanda Barker, Tim Dillon, Chris Sandiford, and Tomaso Sanelli
Netflix
There are many Thanksgiving horror movies that exist, and a slasher villain dressed as a pilgrim is nothing new. However, Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving managed to elevate the tropes of a Thanksgiving slasher film with a sophisticated whodunnit Scream-inspired plot and bizarre satire on the dangers of Black Friday shopping.
The movie opens with a Black Friday disaster that leaves several people dead inside a grocery store owned by the father of the main character (Nell Verlaque’s Jessica Wright). The killer wears a John Carver mask and targets all those he feels responsible for the event, which includes Jessica and her friends. Patrick Dempsey plays the sheriff, and you’ll be left in suspense until the very end.
Josh Ruben
Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Gigi Zumbado, Jordana Brewster, Michaela Watkins, Devon Sawa, Ben Black, Alex Walker, Lauren O’Hara, and Latham Gaines
2025
81%
6.1
VOD
Heart Eyes is another Valentine’s Day-themed slasher packed with as much horror and satire as Thanksgiving and Josh Ruben’s previous movie, Werewolves Within.It’s a great one to watch on V-Daybecause the protagonists here, Ally and Jay, get hilariously mistaken as a couple who must now survive the unstoppable ‘Heart Eyes Killer.’
The movie balances gory and suspenseful kills with a very self-aware and clever romantic comedy-infused storyline, ending with the usual whodunnit twist. Ally and Jay are also played by two veterans of the slasher genre, Totally Killer’s Olivia Holt and Scream 5 and 6’s Mason Gooding. Heart Eyes also comes from producer and co-writer Christopher Landon of Drop, Freaky, and Happy Death Day fame.
you’re able to now watch the ten-minute opening scene of Heart Eyes on YouTube, courtesy of Bloody Disgusting.
Damien Leone
Lauren LaVera, David Howard Thornton, Samantha Scaffidi, Elliott Fullam, Amelie McLain, Jenna Kanell, Catherine Corcoran, Pooya Mohseni, Sarah Voigt, Kailey Hyman, Casey Hartnett, Charlie McElveen, Antonella Rose, Margaret Anne Florence, Bryce Johnson, Mason Mecartea, and Alexa Blair Robertson
5.5
Scream Box, Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, Tubi, Pluto TV, The Roku Channel
78%
6.3
Damien Leone’s unrated Terrifier series delivers some of the most gory, brutal,and impressive practical effects killsby its silent and silly main villain, Art the Clown. The first two are set on Halloween, while the third installment is on Christmas, with Art getting his fill of cookies and blood and trying on Santa’s beard.
The first film is the most underratedand features some unforgettable kills, like the hacksaw and skinsuit scenes. The sequel starts building the story of Art versus Sienna, with even more outrageous and comically vile Halloween-themed kills. Terrifier 3, however, is the best installment, building to a shocking climax in the finale and upping Art and Vicky’s carnage to even more creative and uncomfortable extremes.
Coralie Fargeat
Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Edward Hamilton-Clark, Gore Abrams, Oscar Lesage, and Hugo Diego Garcia
89%
7.3
Mubi
You rarely see a horror movie set around the celebration of New Year’s, let alone an Oscar-winning one for Best Makeup and Hairstyling along with a Best Actress Golden Globe for Demi Moore. Moore plays aging fitness TV star Elisabeth Sparkle, who decides to take the ‘Substance,’ a green agent that allows her body to produce a younger version connected to herself, birthed through her back.
The younger, more attractive Sue immediately starts taking the spotlight, with her show’s ratings spiking to such numbers that the studio chooses her to host the New Year’s show. Elisabeth and Sue start to have growing jealousy, especially when one starts abusing the Substance.
Bob Clark
Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, Keir Dullea, John Saxon, Andrea Martin, Lynne Griffin, Marian Waldman, Art Hindle, James Edmond, Doug McGrath, and Michael Rapport
1974
71%
7.1
Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, AMC+, Tubi, Pluto TV, Crackle, The Roku Channel
Black Christmas predates John Carpenter’s horror classic Halloween and is one of the most innovative and truly creepy holiday slasher movies set during Christmas. The most notable element of Black Christmas is that the killer remains unseen, with every one of his kills being done from a first-person point of view, an atypical style that would influence the future of horror.
The terror ensues at a university sorority house full of sisters on Christmas break, with the killer hiding in their attic the whole time and making strange, threatening phone calls before he comes out to pick them off one by one.
Black Christmas received two remakes, one in 2006 and another in 2019 from Blumhouse, but they both failed to live up to the same acclaim that the original Bob Clark movie set for the genre.
John Carpenter
Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Nick Castle, Nancy Kyes, Tony Moran, P.J. Soles, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Brian Andrews, and Arthur Malet
1978
97%
7.7
AMC+, Plex, Crackle, Xumo Play
You can’t go wrong with a Halloween horror classic like John Carpenter’s Halloween, which followed in the footsteps of iconic slashers before it and ultimately helped popularize the genre. Michael Myers becameone of the most infamous villains in horror cinema, Jaime Lee Curtis gave one of the best final girl performances with her character Laurie Strode, and the theme song is just iconic.
Halloween is set in the fictional location of Haddonfield, Illinois, where Michael Myers wreaks havoc on the townsfolk after escaping from a mental institution. His childhood psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Loomis, hunts Michael as he sets his sights on Strode and her friends, who are distracted with babysitting and spending time with their boyfriends.
