20 non-traditional Christmas movies to watch this year

7. Gremlins

Watch if: You’re curious about what the Muppets would be like if they turned evil.

What it’s about: A teenager gets a creature called a mogwai as a pet and wastes no time getting it wet, and feeding it after midnight — two of the three things you should never do with mogwai. (The third is expose it to sunlight.) A shocking level of chaos and horror ensues.

Connection to Christmas: Pretty strong. Billy (Zach Galligan) receives Gizmo the mogwai as a Christmas gift from his father.

Why it makes for good holiday entertainment: Sometimes cognitive dissonance can be a good thing, which is probably why people keep making horror films set on or around Christmas. You don’t expect Christmas narratives to be terrifying, or violent, or to have life and death stakes. But turns out horror and the holidays go together like peanut butter and chocolate. It’s the oxymoron that keeps on giving.

The juxtaposition of Christmas cheer and supernatural hooliganism is why Gremlins works. From the outside the film appears to be a wholesome, off-brand Jim Henson production; no one’s really prepared for how dark and sinister it gets, even if they, like myself, are aware beforehand that the cuddly mogwai eventually go bad. The bad mogwai, or the Gremlins, do not mess around. They drink and smoke, they commit vandalism, and they kill.

It looks like a Christmas movie and sounds like a Christmas movie, but isn’t a Christmas movie. That shock to the system is worth the price of admission.