These Dark Christmas Films Will Bring Out Your Inner Grinch

If an alien were to exclusively watch Hallmark Christmas movies, it would walk away with the impression that Christmas is a magical and enchanted time in the human calendar. Surely, the alien would conclude, human beings are only capable of falling in love between the short period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Santa's sleigh brings presents for kids, and romantic miracles for adults. Everything is fine for one month.

But as any human would tell you, the Christmas season can actually be kind of sad. Once you're an adult, the holiday season is a time of reflection, more than it is a time of present-giving. It's a time when we turn inwards, towards each other. We regularly watch movies that will make us cry, just to expunge those emotions.

So it's fitting not all Christmas films are Hallmark films. The films on this list pluck the dark, disturbing undercurrents of the holiday season — and as a result, some of these are the most moving (and hilarious) Christmas films of them all.