Most of the major streaming services are currently overflowing with cheesy Christmas movies that never saw the inside of a movie theater. Instead, their Christmas flicks are either streaming originals or films that migrated from Lifetime, Hallmark, or any other TV network that pumps out dozens of Christmas movies every year.
Amazon Prime Video has a lot of those films, too. Fortunately, Prime Video is also the home of actual Christmas classics that offer so much more than these made-for-TV flicks. For this holiday season, we’re throwing the spotlight on The Man Who Invented Christmas, Scrooged, Last Christmas, and Violent Night as they join our roundup of the best Christmas movies on Amazon Prime Video right now.
Looking for more holiday picks? We’ve also assembled guides to the best Christmas movies on Netflix and the best Christmas movies on Hulu.
The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
60%
7.0/10The Man Who Invented Christmas’s title might be giving Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) too much credit, but he really did play a major role in how we celebrate the holiday season. That’s how much influence Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has had over the last 180 years. This particular film dramatizes Dickens’ life when he struggles to write his next story before coming face-to-face with his own creation: Ebenezer Scrooge (Christopher Plummer).
The visions of Scrooge and other characters from A Christmas Carol may not be real, but the emotions they bring out of Dickens force him to reconsider his story and his relationship with his own family. From there, a classic novel is born.
Scrooged (1988)
38%
6.9/10Scrooged is basically A Christmas Carol, but modernized and played more for laughs with Bill Murray in the leading role as Frank Cross, a Scrooge-like network executive at the IBC Television network. On Christmas Eve, Frank forces his employees to work on A Christmas Carol broadcast while giving them chintzy gifts for Christmas.
In other words, Frank is a perfect candidate for some Christmas Carol magic to find any humanity under his sleazy exterior. The Ghost of Christmas Past (David Johansen), the Ghost of Christmas Present (Carol Kane), and the Ghost of Christmas Future (Robert Hammond) are really going to have their hands full trying to convince Frank to change.
Last Christmas (2019)
50%
6.5/10Warning: If you’ve been trying to avoid hearing Wham!’s Last Christmas this holiday season, you will be Whamed several times in this film. The name of the movie really should have been a dead giveaway. Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke goes the full rom-com here as Kate Andrich, a young woman whose recovery from a life-threatening illness has left her working at a year-round Christmas store with no prospects in her life.
Kate soon takes a liking to Tom Webster (Henry Golding), a handsome guy who disappears from her life for days at a time. And while Kate finds that aggravating, she is also inspired by Tom’s innate goodness to become a better person herself. The only thing that Kate can’t understand is why she and Tom can’t be together as a couple.
Violent Night (2022)
55%
6.7/10Unless your kids are old enough to see a candy cane turned into a lethal weapon without running away screaming in terror, then Violent Night may not be the perfect family Christmas film for you. Once you look past the over-the-top action and grisly deaths of the bad guys, you may see that this movie really does get what Christmas is supposed to be about. It’s also very easy to sympathize with David Harbour’s burnt-out Santa Claus.
Santa is ready to call it a day on Christmas for good when he finds himself trapped in a rich family’s home on Christmas Eve while a thief calling himself Scrooge (John Leguizamo) and his men threaten their lives. Because one of the family members, Trudy (Leah Brady), really believes in both Santa and Christmas, Santa embraces his inner John McClane in the best Die Hard-adjacent film we’ve seen in years.
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
89%
8.6/10Christmas Lodge (2011)
6.0/10A Snow Globe Christmas (2013)
5.5/10The Christmas Toy (1986)
8.0/10Christmas in Mississippi (2017)
6.5/10A Bride for Christmas (2012)
6.6/10Christmas on the Bayou (2013)
6.2/10
