The Worst Christmas Movies of All Time, Worse Than a Lump of Coal

Christmas movies are an annual tradition. And there are new ones every year. But will all those movies, you're bound to get more than a few stinkers. So, sure, it might be a wonderful life. But these holiday movies are anything but. Need a gag gift? Or an ironic flick to make fun of at your holiday parties? Check out the worst Christmas movies that have our critics yelling, "Bah humbug!"

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians

Usually, Santa's deal is "deliver presents to every kid on earth then head back to the North Pole". And when he steps out of his planetary jurisdiction, we get bizarre dreck like Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. Check out the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode featuring this film for a bonus stocking stuffer.

Surviving Christmas

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] Made in Ben Affleck's prime Gigli days, Surviving Christmas is a uniquely unpleasant affair. It tries to be the holiday equivalent of Meet The Parents, with awkward familial interactions and comedic setpieces. Instead, it's a pointlessly ugly, mean-spirited film.

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

The first Silent Night, Deadly Night is, if you're in the right mood, an effective little holiday slasher. The second one is, to put it simply, not. It rehashes an egregious amount of footage from the first one, and is anchored around an unsettlingly bad performance. However, if you're in the right mood, it might be the perfect "so bad it's good" holiday treat.

Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas

This movie's capital W Weird. It feels like they gave Kirk Cameron, he of Growing Pains and born again Christian fame, an absolute blank check. And he used it to make a piece of satirical religious propaganda that's also self-aware and full of meta trickery. It defies logic, reason, and any sense of normal filmmaking instincts.

Santa With Muscles

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] On paper, we're not mad at the pitch, "Hulk Hogan is Santa". But we're furious at the execution. It's cloying, underwritten, and full of cringeworthy performances, especially from Hogan himself. Plus, come on, Santa With Muscles? They couldn't come up with any better of a title?

The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause

The first Santa Clause is a surprisingly smart flick, fusing family fun with an adult sense of humor. The second one holds up alright. The third one, subtitled The Escape Clause, is a straight shot into crazy town. Its tone is far removed from the rest of the franchise (it's approximately 8 million times broader), and Martin Short makes a miserably potent impression.

Santa Claus: The Movie

A dark, shadowy, grimy film about the horrors of corporate greed infecting every facet of society... that's also a family film about Christmas? Yep, that's the pitch of Santa Claus: The Movie, a tonally shapeshifting flick featuring British comedy legend Dudley Moore as a creepy elf. John Lithgow demolishes the scenery as an evil corporate stooge.

Reindeer Games

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] For Ben Affleck, are the titular games "Make bad Christmas movies"? If so, he succeeded, as Reindeer Games really is as bad as its reputation suggests. They couldn't even salvage it after massive reshoots, and it winds up on the screen a messy, scattershot, generic work. Though do not blame Charlize Theron. She is a national treasure, even in this.

The Nutcracker And The Four Realms

One of our list's most contemporary features, this candy-coated Disney adaptation of the versatile story is garish and aggressive. It's full of so much cheap looking CGI that it becomes hard to have any grounded anchor point. We wish one of the realms they visited had a better screenwriting professor.

A Madea Christmas

It feels mean to make fun of Tyler Perry. During the holidays, it's especially Grinch-like. But facts are facts, and A Madea Christmas, like many of his works, is objectively cheap and sloppy. When you watch the film, you get the sense that Perry couldn't care less about his audience's intelligence.

Jingle All The Way 2

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] While it has its detractors, the first Jingle All The Way has snuck its way into the contemporary Christmas cult canon. Its sequel, swapping Arnold Schwarzenegger for, uh, Larry The Cable Guy, has no chance. Like its star's comedy, the movie reaches for the lowest hanging fruit, and then completely whiffs, settling for, like, rotten dirt instead.

Christmas Icetastrophe

Let's be honest: What do you expect out of a SyFy original movie called Christmas Icetastrophe? If it's frozen acting, wonky special effects, and laughably contrived screenwriting, this might be the gift that keeps on giving. It's not quite the holiday Sharknado, but it can be a good time if you let it.

Home Alone 4: Taking Back The House

This film commits many hack family film sins, including a cliche dance montage to "I Feel Good". But it's worst crime is surely deciding to revisit the McCallister family of the first two, without one single cast member coming back. All the characters you know and love are played by unknowns (and, uh, French Stewart). Plus, their current situations are in some cases downright cruel. Getting hit in the head with paint is better than watching this movie.

Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] The title of this film is catnip for critics. Just throw in a "film" between the last two words and call it a day, right? Well, we'll give it more attention -- unlike its screenwriters. Despite a committed performance from star Aubrey Plaza, the Grumpy Cat movie is a largely one-note experience, with cheap production values and unneccessarily cheesy plot moves.

Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas

A litany of A-list talent teamed up to adapt one of our most beloved Christmas books. And they absolutely fell flat on their faces. Jim Carrey and Ron Howard screwed up The Grinch to an almost absurd degree. It strikes an overcaffeinated, almost grungy aesthetic. It's like if Terry Gilliam's Brazil rhymed, and we do not mean that as a compliment.

Fred Claus

Vince Vaughn Holiday Offense #1: Phoning in playing Santa Claus' brother (a not so bad Paul Giamatti) in Fred Claus. It's an attempt at shaking up the family Christmas film genre with some of Vaughn's deadpan machismo. Instead, it's a completely film-by-numbers work, with Vaughn's schlubby asides furthering to slow the narrative down.

Four Christmases

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] Vince Vaughn Holiday Offense #2: Phoning in playing a put-upon husband to a wife (a not so bad Reese Witherspoon) in Four Christmases. Vaughn and Witherspoon must go to four holiday celebrations because of divorce and blended families, and the film goes out of its way to shame all involved. It then pulls a wild 180 at the end in an attempt to find a heart, which is even more insulting.

Elves

Low-budget horror, no matter the season, has its charms. So, we can say that Elves is technically a terrible movie, with bargain-bin makeup effects and stodgy acting permeating through the thing. But you just might find the whole thing endearingly silly. 

A Dogwalker's Christmas Tale

The best way to pitch A Dogwalker's Christmas Tale is: What if Tommy Wiseau made a Christmas movie? And while lots of bad movies might get broadly painted with a The Room brush, Dogwalker earns the comparison with its strained acting and surreally watchable incompetence.

Deck The Halls

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] What if Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito hated each other? And decided to try and ruin each other's Christmas in a series of surprisingly violent vignettes? And for our final question, more importantly, why did a studio think a holiday-cheer-hungry audience would want to subject themselves to this film's slick misery and misanthropy? Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-no thanks.

Daddy's Home 2

Let's step away from the comeback casting of noted abuser/racist/anti-Semite Mel Gibson (though, also, let's not). Taken simply as a movie, Daddy's Home 2 is straight up awful. Its jokes are forced, its relationships forced, and its attempts at sentimentality out of nowhere.

Christmas With The Kranks

Jamie Lee Curtis and Tim Allen have both given good performances in holiday classics (Curtis' being, you know, Halloween). But when you put them together, the result is less alchemy and more oil and water. They have no chemistry, and the result is watching two people force their way through a plot that could have some charm. We get plenty "kranky" after watching this train wreck.

The Christmas Chronicles

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] So you're scrolling through Netflix, and see Kurt Russell dressed as a sexy Santa. Seems like an easy choice, right? We're warning you: The Christmas Chronicles is much weirder and worse than it's letting on. It's shockingly dark in its emotions, jokes, and actual photography. It's embedded with casual violence. And it's brimming with forced emotional cheese. A fascinating failure.

An American Carol

Let's get the premise of An American Carol out of the way first: A slovenly Michael Moore-type is visited by ghosts, A Christmas Carol-style, in order to change his left-leaning ways. If that politically ain't your bag, that's cool. But even if it is, the film disappoints with a series of too-easy jokes and dispiritingly cheap filmmaking.

A Christmas Story 2

The filmmakers of A Christmas Story 2 should wash their mouth out with soap. Because adding an unnecessary entry to the objective Christmas classic is the cinematic equivalent to yelling fudge in front of your dady. Only we didn't say fudge. And this film didn't come close to capturing the magic of any moment in the first one.