From classic Christmas movies like The Muppet Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life to animated kids movies to Christmas horror movies and even a Netflix original, these are some of the best Christmas movies you can stream.
Christmas season is in full swing, and with it comes the annual feast of all things yuletide-themed and appropriately festive on streaming. Christmas is a holiday that’s inspired a wealth of enduring comedies about the value of family, community, love, and selflessness during the darkest and coldest time of the year. It’s also spawned no shortage of films that push at the boundaries of those well-worn tropes, twisting their holly-jolly exterior into cerebral and occasionally macabre stories that probe at the very darkness the holiday is meant to fend off.
In the spirit of the season and all its incarnations, we’ve pulled together a list of treasured classics and eclectic oddities for audiences to watch in the lead-up to Christmas. Like with Santa’s big ’ol toy sack, there’s something here for everyone!
Christmas rom-coms? We’ve got Christmas rom-coms. Christmas-tinged superhero flicks? You bet. Christmas horror? Yeah, we’ve got some of those too. From undersung hits to all-time classics, here are the best Christmas movies to watch at home this holiday season. Our latest update added Le Pupille, The Shop Around the Corner, and Hawkeye.A Christmas Prince
Where to watch: Netflix
If you’re looking for 100% confectionary fluff (and aren’t pumping Hallmark’s Christmas schedule directly into your veins), give this so-much-better-than-you-think-it’ll-be Netflix Original a whirl. Amber (iZombie’s Rose McIver) is a journalist sent to the made-up land of Aldovia for the royal passing-of-the-torch to bad-boy bachelor Prince Richard (Ben Lamb). Amber winds up going undercover in the castle to get all the scoops, but… she gets in too deep! The magic of the Christmas season makes everything too romantic, and awww, you know the rest. —Matt PatchesBatman Returns
Where to watch: Max, Prime, or rent on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play
Is Batman Returns a superhero movie that happens to take place around Christmas, or a gothic Christmas film that happens to have superheroes and villains in it? In any case, Tim Burton’s 1992 follow-up to his original Batman is an awesome film filled with cool visuals, exciting action sequences, attempted murder, and a nail-biting finale centered around kidnapped babies, a bat-shaped boat, and an army of rocket-strapped kamikaze penguins. It’s also a story about two strange people who find comfort in each other’s strangeness, an orphan who grows up to seek revenge against the parents and society that shunned him, and a nefarious industrialist looking to make a quick buck at any cost. Though it may test the limits of what you might consider a “Christmas movie,” Batman Returns is a fantastic seasonal watch and a fun, weird film for the whole family. —Toussaint EganBetter Watch Out
Where to watch: Peacock, Shudder, AMC Plus, for free with a library card on Hoopla or Kanopy, for free with ads on Tubi, Pluto TV, Plex, and Crackle
Better Watch Out feels like a reaction piece 26 years removed from the original Home Alone. The latter is a family comedy film whose premise could’ve easily been played out like a home invasion horror movie, if not for the plucky Ferris Bueller-esque charisma of Macaulay Culkin and the dopey oafishness of Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. Better Watch Out inverts that dynamic, introducing inventive twists and turns that take the unspoken horror story at the heart of that aforementioned film and transforms it into something way darker and more disturbing. This is a not feel-good Christmas story; this is a psychological horror movie that plays with the idea of whether or not the behaviors of a kid like Kevin McCallister could be considered a sign of latent sociopathy. To say any more would risk spoiling the film, but rest assured: Better Watch Out is an engrossing holiday horror drama if you have the stomach for its occasionally gory thrills. —TEBlack Christmas
Where to watch: Peacock, Shudder, for free with a library card on Kanopy, for free with ads on Freevee, Pluto TV, Tubi
If you’re looking for a straightforward, tinsel-lined horror movie, you can’t do better than Bob Clark’s Canadian slasher flick. (Apologies to Jack Frost, the serial-killer snowman movie — Black Christmas is just better!) Originally released in the U.S. as Silent Night, Evil Night, the low-budget horror movie crackles like a warm fire blown by a chilly gust of wind. Clark uses shadows and lurking horrors to turn a sorority house into a something ripped from a Shirley Jackson paperback cover, and while the transgressions within don’t find too much inspiration in Christmas iconography, there is a “wrapping job” that will leave you gasping. —MPChristmas in Connecticut
Where to watch: Max, or rent on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play
Few movie stars have ever had the impact on the industry as Barbara Stanwyck, and Christmas in Connecticut is a delightful Christmas rom-com showcasing her charm and movie star charisma.
Stanwyck plays Elizabeth Lane, a food writer who purports to write about her life as a Connecticut housewife living on a farm with her husband and baby. There’s just one problem: She’s made the whole thing up. Her publisher — completely unaware that Lane is actually single, lives in New York, and can’t cook — decides Lane should host a lavish Christmas dinner for a soldier returning from war (Dennis Morgan), who is also a big fan.
