Let's Call it a Year

 I suppose the theme here this year was horror, but then wasn't that the theme for 2025 everywhere? Regardless, we mixed things up by starting far earlier than we ever have in the past, posting a Christmas horror movie review every day in October. I'm not planning on doing that again next year, but then again I wasn't planning on it this year, so who knows? There's certainly more than enough holiday entries in the genre to make it possible.

We are planning to come back in some capacity next year, though I'm not sure what that will look like in terms of duration or frequency of reviews... or even if I want reviews to remain my focus. Over the past decade or so, I've been interested in exploring the ways that holiday media evolved, and I actually think I'm starting to get a grasp on that. At some point, I should probably consolidate those theories into a form that's intelligible.

But that sounds like a "next year problem." For now, let's take a moment and appreciate that the holidays are finally here and 2025 is mercifully drawing to a close. Granted, that means 2026 is right around the corner, but - what did I just say about "next year problems?"

So let's instead take a moment and look back at the parts of this year that didn't absolutely suck. So... basically just the good movies, right? God knows the news was just back-to-back terrible.

Starting with my horror experiment, I discovered at least one underappreciated gem that's going on my short list of all-time great Christmas horror flicks: A Christmas Tale. The noir films Beware, My Lovely and Lady on a Train were also fantastic, for very different reasons.

Setting horror aside, I was also smitten with new (or at least new-ish) holiday offerings, A Sudden Case of Christmas, Babygirl, Animal Tales of Christmas Magic, Small Things Like These, and perhaps the biggest surprise of the year (to me, at least), A Very Jonas Christmas Movie. The volume of exceptional holiday movies seems like it's accelerated in recent years, which is something we should all be thankful for. I have no idea if any of this is sustainable, but at the very least the 2020s are shaping up to be one of the best decades for holiday entertainment in history (possibly the very best).

This isn't quite the end of the season for us, of course: we'll be continuing the tradition of acknowledging the New Year with a couple bonus posts. But seeing as I'll be even more exhausted by that time than I am now, I figured I'd get the retrospective out of the way now.

Thanks to everyone following along with us through this bizarre holiday binge we keep doing. And, as always, Merry Christmas and all that.