It’s the hap-happiest season of all. We bring nature inside as we adorn our living spaces with seasonally appropriate trees, and we light up the longer nights with bright and colourful lights. Music from generations long since passed is re-played and re-contextualised, and centuries old iconography is re-evaluated and repurposed.

There’ll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting, and carolling out in the snow. If we’ve been good, we’ll receive gifts (thanks Santa!), and if we’re lucky we’ll eat so much food we can barely move. Almost certainly, we’ll watch a movie. From the Netflix Originals of the current era to the silver screen classics of wartime Hollywood, Christmastime movie watching doesn’t discriminate based on picture quality, colour or the lack thereof, acting powerhouses or barely trained actors – if it works, it works. And if it’s good, we’ll hold onto it forever.

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we’ve scoured the annals of Christmas movie history to bring you the very best of the best to watch this holiday season. These films are Christmas classics and beloved cult hits, some culturally significant and others often overlooked. These films are seasonal treats; two advent calendars worth of movie magic from the big-wigs in Hollywood and beyond.

Short films (those with a runtime of under one hour) will not be included here, nor will films that cross multiple seasons but feel like Christmas movies – sorry You’ve Got Mail and Bridget Jones’s Diary. Debatable Christmas movies like Gremlins have also been omitted because of their inclusion in our alternative list “10 Excellent Non-Christmas Films Set at Christmas“. Seasonal classic The Apartment has also been disqualified on the grounds that it covers Christmas and beyond, and is arguably more of a new year’s movie.

These are 50 Unmissable Christmas Movies as chosen by The Film Magazine team members. Entries by Mark Carnochan, Kieran Judge, Martha Lane, Sam Sewell-Peterson and Joseph Wade.

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1. Remember the Night (1940)

Golden Era stars Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray (who would go on to star in The Apartment) spark an unlikely romance when Stanwyck’s Lee Leander steals a bracelet from a jewellery store and MacMurray’s John “Jack” Sargent is assigned to prosecute her over the Christmas holidays.

One of the era’s many beloved studio romantic comedies, Remember the Night features all the elements that would come to define the genre while encompassing some screwball comedy and classic transatlantic accents. The tagline read “When good boy meets bad girl they remember the night”, and it’s likely you’ll remember this seasonal treat too. JW

2. The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

Few things signal classic Hollywood Christmases like Jimmy Stewart, and 6 years before arguably his most memorable performance in the iconic Frank Capra Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life, he starred in a seasonal favourite that was just as beloved by critics, The Shop Around the Corner.

This holiday romance from Ernst Lubitsch (who also directed Heaven Can Wait) sees Stewart’s Alfred fall in love with his pen pal who, unbeknownst to him, is the colleague he most despises at his gift store job – You’ve Got Mail has got nothing on this. With some hearty moments and all of the circumstantial comedy of the best movies of the era, The Shop Around the Corner will make you laugh and fill your heart in that special way that only the best Christmas movies can. JW

3. Holiday Inn (1942)

Early sound pictures were revolutionised by famed tap dancer Fred Astaire, and by 1942 he was a certified movie musical megastar. In Mark Sandrich’s seasonal musical Holiday Inn, he teams with would-be Christmas icon and man with a voice as sooth as silk, Bing Crosby. The result is one of the most iconic and influential Christmas movies ever made.

The film’s outdated attitude towards race are cringe-inducing and inexcusable in a 21st century context (there’s a whole sequence featuring blackface), but its other dated sensibilities shine bright amongst more modern and commercial Christmas films; its wholesome aura, classic dance scenes, and era-defining songs making for an unmissable experience. To top it all, Bing Crosby sings “White Christmas” for the first time in this film, cementing it in history as a seasonal classic. JW

4. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Widely acknowledged as one of the holiday season’s best-ever films, Vincente Minnelli (An American in Paris) illuminates his would-be wife Judy Garland in arguably her most established performance, bringing Christmas cheer to all without sacrificing any of the harsh realities facing the American people in the first half of the 20th century.

Featuring the original (and arguably the best) rendition of Christmas classic “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, and being anchored by some heartbreaking story elements, Meet Me In St. Louis maintains its power and relevance 80 years on. It offers a Christmas movie that will forever mark the height of its sub-genre, as well as the two filmmaking careers (of Minnelli and Garland) that helped to define the era. JW

Recommended for you: There’s No Place Like St. Louis at Christmas

5. Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

Remember the Night star Barbara Stanwyck is once again front and centre for a Golden Era Hollywood Christmas movie, this time playing a city magazine editor whose lies about being a perfect housewife are put to the test when her boss and a returning war hero invite themselves to her house.

This is screwball comedy with all the spirit of the festive season is as romantic as it is funny, and prominently features the shadows of World War II to gift the film a unique emotionality that has ensured it is rewatched year on year. JW

The final girl was a response to many political and cultural shifts during the 1970s and quickly became a staple of the genre. Over the decades, final girls have been many things: victims, virgins, good girls, bad girls, action heroes, and even killers themselves. They have evolved into complex heroines, subverting genre tropes, and redefining again and again what it means to be the last woman standing.

This Movie List chronicles the evolution of the final girl, from its slasher origins beginning in 1974 with, most notably, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, until now. It’s an exploration and celebration of one of horror’s most iconic tropes – and the women who made it so.

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10. Jess Bradford – Black Christmas (1974)

Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) was the first incarnation of the final girl – completely ahead of her time. She’s a smartly written, fully developed heroine with a complex interior life. Most importantly, Jess doesn’t follow a key rule that will later become a staple of the final girl trope: she’s not a virgin. This is made obvious by her desire to get an abortion.

Jess is progressive and sex-positive and her survival says loudly that sex doesn’t have to ruin a woman’s life, nor should it condemn her to death. In addition, Jess’s heartbreaking choice to stay in the house and try to save her friends – even after she’s made aware that the killer is somewhere inside – rather than save herself, solidifies Jess as a gutsy, brave final girl that many went on to emulate in the decades to come.

Jess is saved from her boyfriend, the presumed killer, after a violent confrontation. Her fate, however, is left ambiguous, something that will become a key element of any great slasher: the killer always comes back for one last scare.

9. Sally Hardesty – The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Released only a few months after Black Christmas, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre tells the story of Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) and her group of friends, who encounter a family of cannibals while on a road trip. Sally is often cited as the archetype of the final girl. Whether that is technically true or not, Sally’s influence on the genre is still felt, decades later.

Compared to Jess, Sally is a blank canvas. Her characterization is almost non-existent. She rarely feels like a real person, someone with wants and desires, likes and dislikes. But she speaks to our primal fears, those feelings that are buried and repressed. Marilyn Burns’ performance is raw and genuine – her terror palpable. In her essay, “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film”, Carol J. Clover says that horror and pornography exist to stimulate, and their success is measured by these effects on the audience. Clover writes, “The target is in both cases the body, our witnessing body. But what we witness is also the body, another’s body, in experience: the body in sex and the body in threat.”

The end of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, where Sally sits on the back of a truck bed, bloodied and half out of her mind with terror and relief, but alive, offers the audience the catharsis all final girls do. We experience the horror of Sally’s body, the cuts and slashes, and screams, and by surviving it, as she does, we’re rewarded with an exhale: our collective survival.

Recommended for you: Texas Chainsaw Massacre Movies Ranked

Black Christmas (2019)
Director: Sophia Takal
Screenwriters: Sophia Takal, April Wolfe
Starring: Imogen Poots, Aleyse Shannon, Lily Donoghue, Caleb Eberhardt, Cary Elwes

The sorority slasher is back. We’re still in the Greek system, but with a decidedly feminist spin for this latest adaptation of Black Christmas directed by Sophie Takal and starring Imogen Poots.

Riley (Poots) and her MKE sisters are entering the Christmas break of their final year of college. Riley’s friend Kris (Aleyse Simpson) is a women’s rights warrior pushing petitions all over campus, and has managed to get a Bust of the founding father of Hawthorne College removed, as well as shake up the teaching staff when it comes to the all-male reading list.

Before the last of the students head home for the holidays, the girl gang go to a frat party to perform a festive number, bedecked in sexy Santa outfits. After stealing the show with a witty ditty exposing rape culture on campus, Riley and her friends begin to receive odd, aggressive messages apparently from the long-dead Hawthorne founder himself, and girls start going missing. 

With no support from campus security – ‘9 times out of 10 in situations like this, the girl’s just with her boyfriend’ – the ladies are left to face the threat alone. 

Much like the Charlie’s Angels remake released last month, Black Christmas wastes no time in asserting its political perspective; only a few scenes in, one of Riley’s sorority sisters bursts into her room, asking for a Diva cup and wearing a t-shirt that says ‘Your Manologuing Is Boring’. In its effort to explain the effects of the patriarchy at every turn, the film loses momentum, authenticity and interest, and starts to feel more like a lecture in Feminism 1.0 than a trip to the pictures.

Is it possible to do both? To tell woke, women-led stories without feeling like their righteous anger is being rammed down your throat? Based on the recent Hollywood output, they haven’t figured it out just yet.

Whilst the script is heavy-handed, the direction and cinematography provide much to enjoy. The use of lighting borders on sheer brilliance; Christmas bulbs bedeck the screen, casting a red and green glow across the faces of the actresses, and the huge sorority house lends itself to wonderful shots filled with multiple doorways – one to remember is a lingering master shot which sees doors opened one at a time, gradually lighting up the hallway before culminating in a great jump scare. The very first murder climaxes with the victim sprawled in the snow, arms waving up and down to attempt her escape; as she’s dragged from the frame, she leaves the imprint of a fallen snow angel behind.

Though originally written as an R rated picture, then pulled back to a PG-13 in an effort to introduce younger girls to horror, the violence is still fairly disturbing. The deaths come thick and fast, and are shown so bluntly that they still shock despite the age-rating’s demand for a lack of blood. At times, the brutality against women feels so incessant it begins to overwhelm – as though Black Christmas is feeding into the very thing it’s trying to take a stand against. There is relief in the opportunities for the women to fight back, but the eye-rolling nature of the script means those moments are distinctly unempowering.

Imogen Poots is the real standout in terms of performance. She has a quiet and delicate nature that speaks to the substantial strength that lies beneath, and is the only one given enough room to make the character her own. The rest of the cast are too suffocated by the laboured dialogue to do anything memorable; the girls are mostly a voicepiece for feminist cliches, and the men made into cartoon villains – though of course, that was the idea.

The change in rating is important; who the filmmakers were trying to speak to with Black Christmas is important. There’s a clumsiness to this movie that will turn off many, but its explicit approach to exploring a world where women get to fight the bad guys is an ideal introduction to the genre for a new generation of female film-lovers. This may not be one to revisit, but it will surely find a place as a modern sleepover staple.

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