Hallmark’s Brainrot Holiday Movies Are Keeping You From Creating New Christmas Classics

Why Hallmark Movies Have Become So Popular

Before we delve into some more alternative Christmas movie suggestions, let’s take a closer look at how Hallmark became a go-to destination for at-home viewers during the Holidays. In 2009, Hallmark began to air its annual “Countdown to Christmas,” showing a mix of original and classic Holiday films. The success of this series, which now begins as early as October, led to the creation of more cheaply-produced Hallmark originals. According to Mental Floss, in 2013, they released 12 new films during that period. Last year, they produced nearly 50 films. 

The mass appeal of Hallmark movies can be largely attributed to the predictability of the narratives. Behavioral scientist Pamela Rutledge told NBC News that these audiences enjoy the repetitive nature of the Hallmark Christmas movie: “The human brain loves patterns, and the predictability is cognitively rewarding.” This may be true, but isn’t there a downside to spoonfeeding predictability to an audience? Sure, so many of these films are seen but how remembered are they? Despite massive viewership, you don’t see people mentioning films like The Mistletoe Secret in the pantheon of great Christmas classics. 

Those aforementioned classics may have contributed to defining the structure of your average Holiday-themed film, but each of these classics has a quality that distinguishes itself from all the Hallmark films. First of all, they’re more ambitious in scale. They were usually released theatrically at first, which likely gives them a timeless prestige factor. They also often have something uniquely memorable about them that transcends the predictable Christmas narrative. For instance, Home Alone is a humorous take on a home invasion story set during the Holidays, while Love Actually deftly navigates almost ten interconnected storylines. Die Hard takes place on Christmas Eve, but it’s also a suspenseful action thriller.

The best Christmas movies have more going on than just Christmas itself, which is something Hallmark executives could learn from if they wanted their movies to be seen as classics. However, that doesn’t seem to be the goal. The goal is viewership. The goal is to produce something so formulaic and low-brow that you could just put it on the background while opening presents and still have a sense of what is going on. Hallmark movies are built for passive attention spans. They cannot be considered great Christmas movies because they can’t even be considered great films in a general sense. 

The Rise of the Subversive Christmas Movie

Before you start to fear that contemporary Christmas movies and future classics do not exist, fear not! There are some genuinely great new Christmas flicks out there with ambitious and original visions that accompany and transcend their Holiday setting. Unlike Hallmark’s “Countdown to Christmas” selections, these films do not fall victim to the Holiday movie formula, and if they do ever so slightly, they tend to deepen or expand that formula in surprising ways.

The most obvious recent example of a contemporary Holiday classic is Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers (2023). The film is set at a boarding school over holiday break. A disgruntled history teacher (played by Paul Giamatti) has to look after the kids whose parents failed to pick them up. The Holdovers harnesses the aesthetic of a nostalgic 1970s Holiday classic while never losing sight of the darker complexities of its characters. It has the warmth of a Christmas classic, but the pathos of an all-around great movie.

Other contemporary films that are worth watching over the holidays expand the Christmas movie into other genres. In the aptly titled Violent Night (2022), David Harbour (of Lily Allen fame) plays a warrior version of Santa Claus in this hostage action comedy. Violent Night was a surprise hit when it came out and despite its unapologetic silliness, gained some praise for its unique and entertaining approach to the Christmas genre. If you’re looking for something offbeat and on the more vulgar side, Violent Night is worth checking out, especially since a sequel is already in the works.

Finally, here’s one for after the kids go to bed: Halina Reijn’s Babygirl (2024). A memorable psychological thriller about a CEO’s dalliance with an intern over the holidays. Babygirl makes for a perfect sensual Christmas double feature with Nicole Kidman’s other Christmas-adjacent film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999). 

Here’s the thing about the state of Christmas movies: The classics are considered classics for a reason. They set the standard, they’re crowd-pleasing, and they still make for a cozy, heartwarming watch. Hallmark movies may have their place in the culture too, but audiences do not need to give way to brain rot just because that’s what the algorithm wants you to consume. There are still Christmas movies and soon-to-be holiday classics being released today that have interesting, and in some cases, subversive stories to tell. These are films that have not been engineered to be “dumbed down” for viewers. So this holiday season, let’s not allow these recent Christmas movies to fall through the cracks just because the Hallmark machine is dressed up in a red suit and hat.

_{via Jakob Owens}