Christmas horror movies are never not popular—but what about those holiday-themed dramas, film noirs, and action comedies that never seem to surface on festive watch lists? We’ve gathered 10 movies to stream if all the traditional titles make you want to gouge your eyes out with candy canes.
Cops—corrupt and otherwise—find Hollywood’s glamorous gleam conceals a seedy underbelly in this 1997 neo-noir James Ellroy adaptation; it stars Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, an Oscar-winning Kim Basinger, and a young Russell Crowe. (Netflix)
In this lively biopic/comedy/crime tale, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as real-life con man Frank Abagnale Jr., Tom Hanks is the FBI agent obsessed with catching him, and Steven Spielberg directs from a script based on Abagnale’s creative memoir. The supporting cast includes Christopher Walken, Amy Adams, Elizabeth Banks, Martin Sheen, James Brolin, and more. (Netflix)
After you stream Todd Haynes’ current awards-buzz title May December on Netflix, watch Carol, his 2015 drama about another age-divided romance—this time between a wealthy, soon-to-be-divorced housewife (Cate Blanchett) and a department store clerk (Rooney Mara) she meets while shopping for Christmas gifts. As this elegant melodrama explores, personal circumstances and the 1950s setting mean substantial roadblocks spring up to keep them apart. (Netflix; not available on ad-supported plan)
The movie that brought the world “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (with lyrics more bleak than the standard version we know today) spans a few holidays in St. Louis as the Smith family eagerly awaits the arrival of the 1904 World’s Fair. Judy Garland is the big star, but after you watch this one you’ll find the antics of Margaret O’Brien—as her mischievous younger sister, Tootie—living rent-free in your brain, especially the ghoulish Halloween scenes. (Max)
Stanley Kubrick’s final film is remembered for a lot of reasons—the paranoia that comes from infiltrating top-secret masked erotica parties is generally top of the list—but the fact that it takes place around Christmas tends to be overlooked. Remedy that by revisiting Tom Cruise’s very strange and surreal New York City holiday odyssey. (Rent on Prime)
Nicholas Ray’s 1948 directorial debut follows a pair of young lovers who impulsively get married and must live in hiding thanks to his checkered past, which includes a prison escape, bank robberies, and being framed for killing a cop. It all comes to a head just before Christmas, and since this is a film noir, you can expect not everybody to have a merry one. (Max via Prime Video, Criterion Channel)
Another Christmas noir, 1961's gritty Blast of Silence follows a Mafia hitman (Allen Baron, who also directed) who returns to his hometown of New York City to complete a particularly risky assignment—and finds his past has more of a hold on him than he’d realized. (Criterion Channel)
Speaking of assassins: this 1996 entry from director Renny Harlin and screenwriter Shane Black stars Geena Davis as a Pennsylvania mother and teacher who realizes, right around Christmas, that the amnesia she suffered eight years prior is hiding a past as a deadly government agent. Samuel L. Jackson, just post-Pulp Fiction, co-stars as the private eye who helps her unravel her twisted past. (Rent on Prime)
Make it a Shane Black mini-festival (he wrote and directed) with this stylish 2005 Christmas-adjacent tale of a crook (Robert Downey Jr.) turned reluctant movie star who teams up with a Hollywood detective (Val Kilmer) when he accidentally gets entangled in a deadly caper. (Rent on Prime)
Still in theaters but now available for home viewing, Alexander Payne’s latest stars Paul Giamatti as a 1970s boarding school teacher tasked with chaperoning the students forced to stick around over Christmas break. Giamatti makes for an excellent curmudgeon, but Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Only Murders in the Building) steals the show as the school’s wry head cook, who’s facing her first holiday without her son after his death in Vietnam. (Rent on Prime)