Happy Bloody Holidays 🩸, ‘Black Christmas’ through the years 👁️, Recommended Christmas reading 📖, & more!

Intro by Brett Petersel | Bluesky | Instagram | Letterboxd 

As we begin to enter the final weeks of 2025, there are a few things left to cover before we welcome in 2026: Christmas and New Year's.

These two holidays are deep-rooted in horror, with many films focusing on both and including a good amount of scares to topple programming that regularly dominates the live and streaming TV holiday calendar, such as holiday films like Love Actually, Home Alone, and A Christmas Story. Sure, the holidays are meant to bring people and families, even strangers, together to relfect on the year past and the one ahead, but there's no better way to watch the snow fall or to ring in a new year than with a horror film.

To celebrate these holidays, below you'll find our weekly Recommended If You Like feature, this time featuring Krampus, as well as Bee Delores' TimeWarp, which takes us through the Black Christmas film evolution.

Whatever holiday you celebrate, we wish you a happy and healthy one!

RIYL: KRAMPUS (2015)

With one week until Christmas, the only thing being summoned here are films that the Horrorverse team recommend if you enjoyed Michael Dougherty’s Krampus. Check out the list on Letterboxd.

IN THE NEWS

Brett Petersel | Bluesky | Instagram | Letterboxd 

🛣️ It’s just the beginning for It Ends as it finds a home at NEON
After premiering at SXSW earlier this year, and then becoming one of the first titles to be available on Letterboxd’s new Video Store feature, It Ends had found a home with NEON. More news will be coming soon on how NEON plans to promote the film, which includes a theatrical release in 2026.

🐋 Move over, Free Willy. There’s a new Killer Whale in town.
Aquatic horror continues to make waves with the upcoming Killer Whale film from Lionsgate. The film, about a killer whale who seeks revenge after years in captivity, splashes its way into theaters and On Demand on January 16th.

❤️ RIP, Rob Reiner.
Last week, we lost a Hollywood legend to a tragic incident. Rob Reiner, known for such classics like Misery, The Princess Bride, and Stand By Me, was tragically murdered. He leaves behind an incredible legacy that will charm generations to come!

OUR FAVORITE CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR’S HORROR FILMS

At Horrorverse, we’re getting into the holiday spirit by sharing some of our favorite Christmas and New Year’s horror films. There are a number of perfect films for that time spent near the Christmas tree all the way through to when the ball drops for New Year’s. Check out favorites on Letterboxd.

DOUBLE TROUBLE

Sarah Stubbs | Bluesky | Instagram | Letterboxd

I don't often get to choose both films for Double Trouble so this week I thought I'd first share what I feel in an underrated piece of holiday horror, There's Something in the Barn. After discussing it this week on Final Girls Feast, the more I think about it, the more I love it. The film is a perfect blend of holiday classics and horror. It has a festive vibe, great music, a fun (and funny) story, and even a bit of folk horror adjacency. The film follows a family that's just moved to Norway (outsiders moving into a place they don't understand trope incoming). They learn that something happened on the property and the son finds a barn elf. He quickly learns that feeding him lutefisk instead of porridge isn't going to work out well. I really think this film is the epitome of cozy horror and is even a good choice for folks who may be a bit squeamish around the genre.

To pair with There's Something in the Barn, I have an obvious but fun (at least I think) choice, Gremlins. Sure, it's gateway horror and leans more on comedy than any sort of scare, but it also shares some commonalities with that aforementioned film. For start, there are rules that should be followed but are broken, the creatures have both good and bad iterations, both have hilarious food/kitchen related scenes, and more. Even with all the similarities, there are enough differences that it wouldn't feel as though you're watching the same movie twice. Gremlins is a more obvious Christmas classic but I think the pair works really well together. Funny enough we've also done a Final Girls Feast episode covering this movie as well!

RECOMMENDED READING

Candi Norwood | Bluesky | Instagram | Letterboxd

I’ve enjoyed many a slasher film - including winter/holiday themed ones (think Black Christmas, Silent Night, Deadly Night, or Jack Frost) over the years, but only in the last several months have slasher novels been on my radar, so for my Christmas reading, along with my usual ghost stories, I decided to check out Candy Cain Kills by Brian McAuley from 2023. I really enjoyed his 2025 release, Breathe In, Bleed Out (you can read my review of that here: https://candikathorror.com/reads/breathe-in-bleed-out), so I was pretty sure this would be a fun read to kick off my holiday season in style.

Candy Cain Kills starts out like all the good slashers do - with a grisly death and foreshadowing that this is just the beginning, as home repairman Rick’s final thought is that he regrets not being able to warn the family that’s renting the place for Christmas that the urban legend of Candy Cain is real.

Cut to - the family that’s renting the place for Christmas: parents Dana and Greg Werner on the verge of divorce trying their best to hold it together, emotionally and financially, what with their plucky twelve-year-old daughter Fiona’s disability and associated medical bills. Loving - but frustrated - older brother Austin and his own issues as the “healthy” child always being overlooked and just being a teenager who not two days ago realized he’s in love with his best friend Mateo completes the family tableau.

Candy Cain Kills is just 140 pages, and McAuley wastes no time bringing us into the world by telling the story from multiple points of view and letting us sit with the thoughts of various characters. The family tension is all the more sympathetic because we see them all more or less trying to be their best selves (or at least thinking about it). We also see the less than altruistic thoughts of other characters in this way, which is no less interesting.

Plenty of horror action is packed into this novella, but it still takes the time needed to build tension and introduce unexpected plot developments. I’m not exaggerating when I say my heart almost stopped at the end of chapter 10. No peeking ahead! Wait for it, it’s worth it.

We even get shades of folk horror (one of my favorite sub-genres) what with the creepy old guy who warns the family to go home if they know what’s good for them (always the creepiest guy in the slasher) also being the alcoholic pastor of Nodland - a town that seems to universally belong to the church, including the good ol’ boy sheriff and the family from the original killings.

The most disturbing thing about Candy Cain Kills, and one of the things that can make slasher novels distinct from slasher films, is the psychological terror we can feel through the victims’ points of view - we’re experiencing it, not just watching it. In this case, the scary part isn’t the bloodshed (though there’s plenty of that), it’s the detail like [a character] is “forced to watch as the [boxcutter] blade is pushed out as far as it will go”. Chilling.

Candy Cain Kills is a fun, quick read with all the slasher goodness - including some appropriate tension-breaking laughs and a sweet budding potential queer romance - I want. The icing on the cake is the added depth of some psychological and folk horror - not to mention a wholly satisfying conclusion (leaving the door wiiiide open for a sequel) - which puts it among my top slasher reads.

Speaking of wide open sequel doors, if you’re lucky enough to have more reading time this holiday season, move on to Candy Cain Kills Again (2024). That’s next on my list!

Random Thoughts:
● I love the juxtaposition of experiencing the story with the current day characters from the inside with watching the characters from the outside in the “slasher film” of the found videotape footage.
● The onomatopoeia! “Clang”, “thud”, “ boom”…brrr.
● Gamer girls rule.

MACABRE DAILY: WEEKLY UPDATES

💀 Skeletons In The Closet: Our Favorite Queer Horror Characters From 2025 [LINK]
💀 Macabre Daily's Trailer Park: Shudder, Independent Film Company, “DOCTOR PLAGUE”, And "MICKEY-VS-WINNIE," (TRAILERS)
💀 COMIC CAULDRON: "CREEPSHOW," "SUPER CREEPSHOW," "NARCO," And "DEAD TEENAGERS" [LINK]

WHAT TO WATCH

TIMEWARP

Bee Delores | Bluesky | Instagram | Letterboxd

Black Christmas Through the Years - A Collection of Essays

'Black Christmas,' a grueling art-piece of male aggression & female power

Black Christmas is as subtle in its themes as a fresh batch of frothy eggnog. Within the first 15 minutes, the viewer is immersed in a seductively tragic world of micro-aggression and suffocating levels of toxic machismo. In rewatching the Canadian cult classic a few weeks ago, I was once again struck with how gruesome and uncomfortable Bob Clark’s 1974 film really is. It’s stunningly visceral and innovative as a slasher prototype, whose smartly drawn examinations of femininity, the Final Girl template, and an attacker’s temperament for loathing women would later be perfected with the beautifully-constructed psycho-thriller known as John Carpenter’s Halloween.

However, Black Christmas was truly ahead of its time, offering up progressive concepts of a woman’s claim over her body and a man’s malicious intentions, and remains the unceremonious Godfather of the slasher craze of the 1980s. Its granular, POV framework splinters the onscreen perspective between that of the viscously provocative villain, only known as “The Moaner” to our house of heroines, and that of a close-knit group of sorority girls, who were coming of age only a decade after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and just a year after Roe v Wade). It’s a raw and unnerving juxtaposition of one white man’s rage set against a backdrop of women’s continuing struggle to break free of the patriarchy and come to understand and revel in their burgeoning sexuality. [Read Bee's essay]


‘Black Christmas’ (2006) remake is somehow both stylish & soulless

The stigma surrounding the term “remake” is not altogether unwarranted. From 1998’s Psycho to Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007) and Friday the 13th (2009), many modern visions of what have become horror classics are often devoid of heart or style and sucked completely dry of the special ingredients that marked their originals as truly groundbreaking marvels. Bob Clark’s grotesquely-unnerving 1974 slasher prototype Black Christmas wasn’t able to escape the remake craze. The first attempt arrived in 2006, and a recent rewatch elicits both exasperation over untapped creative possibilities and squeamish nausea from its sickening, eye-popping imagery.

A screenplay written by Glen Morgan, whose most notable work then was the 2003 remake of Willard (first released in 1971), Black Christmas attempts to over-explain the killer Billy Lenz’s upbringing, one wrought of emotional abuse and rape, and under-utilize even our main protagonist. Katie Cassidy (Arrow) emerges as our heroine Kelli Presley (taking up the mantel from Olivia Hussey’s Jess Bradford), and while her acting chops are sharpened to perfection, broad character strokes and a generally paper-thin script fail to endear her to the audience, and she simply fades into a sea of pretty faces. So, what results is an overly ambitious but somehow soulless slasher that relies predominantly on its many kills to chill and thrill you. The cast wrangles other such prominent names as Michelle Trachtenberg (EuroTrip, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Lacey Chabert (Mean Girls, Party of Five, Not Another Teen Movie), Crystal Lowe (Final Destination 3), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Wolf Lake, 10 Cloverfield Lane) and Oliver Hudson (Rules of Engagement, Nashville), who plays opposite Cassidy as the archetypal scumbag boyfriend. [Read Bee's essay]


‘Black Christmas’ 2019 is a world-burning triumph

1974’s Black Christmas made a political statement. Released a year after Roe v. Wade, the film’s lead Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) confronts not only her domineering boyfriend – the pro-choice subplot bubbles right on the surface – but a killer whose palpable disgust for and hatred of women smothers the screen. “Its granular, POV framework splinters the onscreen perspective between that of the viscously-provocative villain, only known as ‘The Moaner’ to our house of heroines, and that of a close-knit group of sorority girls, who were coming of age only a decade after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and just a year after Roe v Wade). It’s a raw and unnerving juxtaposition of one white man’s rage set against a backdrop of women’s continuing struggle to break free of the patriarchy and come to understand and revel in their burgeoning sexuality,” reads the crux of our review last winter.

Film critic/writer April Wolfe and director Sophia Takal spin a barbaric, but delightfully empowering, contemporary yarn which takes direct cues from Bob Clark’s original while also unraveling a wildly bold and pointed conversation around date rape culture on college campuses. 2019’s Black Christmas punches harder with riskier thematic beats, pulling specific talking points from the #MeToo movement (such as “Not All Men!”), and slithers underneath the fingernails of toxic white men everywhere with delicious comeuppance. It’s the kind of soap-box treatment that gives women even more clearance and agency to tell their own stories on their own time. With a PG-13 rating, the 90-minute joyride navigates around gore-less sequences with shock, awe, and looming dread.

The stage is set in the spirit of the original: Hawthorne College is shutting down for holiday break, and as attentions are drawn to decorations, family affairs, and the upcoming talent show, sorority girls start to go missing. Yet unlike both predecessors, the 1974 landmark and 2006’s grotesque and soulless remake, 2019’s iteration highlights a growing awareness of something amiss almost from the start. Riley, portrayed with great nuance by Imogen Poots (Green Room), contends with her brutal sexual assault and its lingering effects that have caused her to retreat into her shell. Her entire world has skewed, everything always feeling a little off, and the sisterhood brings her comfort, stability, warmth, and, more importantly, a warrior-like strength in the finale. Aleyse Shannon commands the screen as the head-strong, unapologetically out-spoken activist named Kris, embodying all sociopolitical forward motion, and Lily Donoghue’s Marty perches on the other end of the spectrum, unaware of the harm in being silent and naive. [Read Bee's essay]

THE HORRORVERSE TEAM

Check out our Screaming Soon list on Letterboxd for the latest release information and what’s coming out in theaters and/or on demand.