The Worst Holiday Movie Ever Made

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The Worst Holiday Movie Ever Made

© Courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films

Audiences love Christmas movies. Each of the top 10 grossing holiday films since 1980 has pulled in over $100 million at the domestic box office. “Home Alone” grossed over $285 million — no small feat. For this reason, studios are continually producing new holiday-themed films, hoping to make the next classic that viewers will return to year after year.

In the rush to produce a hit, however, moviemakers often miss the mark. For every classic holiday film such as “It’s a Wonderful Life,” there are plenty of flops that audiences are in no rush to revisit anytime soon.

24/7 Tempo has identified the 40 worst holiday movies ever made based on critic and general audience movie ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and user ratings on Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

Many of the titles on the list are attempts to cash in on past successes. Multiple sequels are among the worst holiday movies, including “The Santa Clause 2,” “Daddy’s Home 2” and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.” Remakes, such as the live-action version of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and the 2006 update of holiday horror flick “Black Christmas,” also appear on the list.
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The onslaught of terrible holiday movies seemed to pick up speed around the turn of the 21st century. Three-quarters of the worst holiday films were released in 2000 or later. The oldest film on the list is yet another pick from the horror genre, the 1984 slasher film “Silent Night, Deadly Night.”

Topping the list of the worst holiday movies ever made is “Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas.” In this 2014 comedy directed by Darren Doane, Cameron plays himself and attempts to save the Christmas spirit by arguing in favor of all the lavish spending and extravagance that come with the holidays. This message failed to resonate with critics, and the movie currently has zero positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. It didn’t do much better with audiences, with only 30% of users reporting that they liked the film.

To determine the worst holiday movies of all time, 24/7 Tempo created an index based on each film’s Rotten Tomatoes average critic rating, Rotten Tomatoes average audience rating and IMDb average user rating. To be considered, each film needed to have at least 5,000 Rotten Tomatoes user ratings, 10 approved Tomatometer critic reviews and 10,000 IMDb user ratings.

We averaged the user ratings from Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb and weighted by the number of votes for each. The combined user rating was then averaged with the Rotten Tomatoes critic rating.

24/7 Tempo used editorial discretion to remove films deemed to not have enough thematic relation to the holidays.

Click here to see our full list of the worst holiday movies ever made.
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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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