Yahoo Picks: Horror movies aren't just for Halloween. From Christmas to Valentine's Day, here are the best scary flicks for every holiday.
Halloween has come and gone, but true horror fans know that the frightful festivities don’t have to be limited to movies that come out in October. Luckily, there are filmmakers who have embraced year-round scares, specifically tailoring their terror to other major holidays.
From Christmas and Thanksgiving to April Fool’s Day and Valentine’s, here are my personal holiday-themed horror favorites to keep spooky season going all year long.
Christmas
Of all of the various holiday-themed horror movies, Christmas stories are the ones that I love the most. If you want to get your younger kids ready for the genre, start them out with something fairly tame like A Nightmare Before Christmasbefore letting them watch Gremlins. For teenagers and up, it’s hard to go wrong with the killer Santa Claus from Silent Night, Deadly Night.
Despite what the streaming algorithm will sometimes tell you, Violent Night is not a horror movie. I love it, but it’s Die Hard-adjacent. If you’re looking for something more along the lines of an actual Christmas slasher, then maybe Krampus is for you.
But my pick for the best Christmas horror movie is the criminally underrated Anna and the Apocalypse. The first (and only) zombie apocalypse musical set during the yuletide season, this British film has some really catchy songs, fun performances, great zombie gore and, in my opinion, the perfect ending.
Anna and the Apocalypse is currently streaming on AMC+.
New Year’s Eve
What better way to ring in the new year than with a battle between Arnold Schwarzenegger and the devil? End of Days premiered at the tail end of the peak Schwarzenegger years, and his character, Jericho Cane, was a lot more vulnerable than his super alpha heroes. Jericho was a largely broken man who was consumed with grief over the deaths of his wife and daughter. Gabriel Byrne chewed up the scenery in his turn as the devil, gleefully attempting to find a young woman (Robin Tunney) and use her as a vessel to usher in the apocalypse. End of Days wouldn’t work without Byrne’s over-the-top performance and Schwarzenegger’s more subdued persona. An underrated gem.
End of Days is currently streaming on Tubi.
Valentine’s Day
For the holiday celebrating all things love, my pick is Valentine, the 2001 slasher starring Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s David Boreanaz, with Denise Richards, Marley Shelton, Jessica Capshaw, Jessica Cauffiel and Katherine Heigl as a group of young women united in their cruelty towards a former male classmate from their high school days. In the present, the five women are stalked by a killer wearing an incredibly creepy Cupid mask. I can’t emphasize how unsettling that mask is. So much so that I’m truly surprised it never caught on like Jason Vorhees’s hockey mask or Scream's Ghostface mask.
Valentine is available to rent or purchase on Prime Video and Vudu.
St. Patrick’s Day
There’s really not a lot to work with here, but if I have to make a choice, then it’s going to be the original Leprechaun. That was the only time that Warwick Davis’s demonic Leprechaun, Lubdan, truly seemed threatening. That was also before Lubdan went into full “I want me gold!” mode for the sequels.
Leprechaun also has the benefit of featuring Jennifer Aniston in one of her first starring roles before she became super famous on Friends. But good luck ever getting Aniston to ever come back to the franchise. Leprechaun Returns killed Aniston’s character off-screen while introducing her daughter, Lila Jenkins (Taylor Spreitler).
Leprechaun is currently streaming on Hulu.
Easter
As Critters movies go, the first Critters is clearly better than Critters 2, but compared to all of the other Easter-oriented horror films, Critters 2 is a masterpiece. Again, it’s all relative. But one of the few clever touches in the sequel is that the critter eggs are dispersed around town right at the same time that Easter egg hunts are underway for the local kids, which lets the ravenous carnivores spread even further.
The main reason why Critters 2 gets the nod for Easter in my book is the memorable death of a guy dressed like the Easter bunny. That alone makes it worthwhile.
Critters 2 is available to rent or purchase on Prime Video and Vudu.
April Fool’s Day
An easy choice for me: April Fool’s Day. The 1986 film is a genuinely great slasher comedy starring Deborah Foreman as Muffy St. John, an ambitious young woman who invites her friends to a remote island mansion that is filled with pranks and gags. As the weekend retreat goes on, Muffy’s pranks turn deadly and people start dropping like flies. As the tension cranks up, the remaining guests don’t realize just how badly they’ve been played by Muffy. This is the kind of film that’s almost impossible to turn into a franchise, given the ending, but there is a direct-to-video remake that couldn’t recapture the charm of the original.
April Fool’s Day is currently streaming on Pluto TV.
Thanksgiving
The options for Thanksgiving horror flicks involve truly terrible films that I just can’t recommend. The truth is, the best Thanksgiving-themed scary movie that anyone has ever made is Eli Roth’s fake Thanksgiving trailer embedded in 2007's Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s two-part homage to ’70s B-movies.
As it happens, Roth’s Thanksgiving is actually going to be a real movie releasing this month. I have high expectations, but it’s going to take a lot to live up to that great original teaser.
Thanksgiving premieres Friday, Nov. 17 in theaters.
Birthdays
Happy Death Day deserves to be shortlisted because the main character, Theresa "Tree" Gelbman (Jessica Rothe), keeps getting killed on her birthday over and over again until she can find a way to break the time loop and escape her fate — not unlike a horror spin on Groundhog Day. It’s fun, but it’s not my top choice in this category.
Instead, I’m going with Sweet Sixteen, the 1983 slasher starring Aleisa Shirley as Melissa Morgan, a 15-year-old new girl in town who attracts the wrong kind of attention from the local men. Well, they all end up dead under some very suspicious circumstances. Everything comes to a bloody conclusion around Melissa’s sweet 16th birthday party. This is one of the seminal ’80s horror flicks, and it shouldn’t be missed.
Sweet Sixteen is currently streaming on Prime Video.
