Would A Christmas Carol be considered a horror movie?
CockneyRebel
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Dickens tends to be a bit ... bleak... sorry for that one... yes, it's on the house...
Also depends a bit on the target age and sensitivities... (there are some "contains creepy crawling thingies" horror movies I find less horror...)
Some adaptations more than others.
it has certainly some dark parts, even bits of the cartoon version (donald duck?) scared me but hardly a surprise...
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The Disney version with Jim Carrey actually seems a bit scarier to me than a bit of the other versions. The story was not long enough to fit the full movie lengh so they added a bit on chase scenes with Scrooge attempting to runaway from the ghosts to add time & action. Some younger kids found that a bit scarey. I guess I would consider the scarier versions to be more horror than the more kid friendly ones. I don't think this debate really matters though considering that sometimes Christmas movies start getting played close to Halloween & Halloween movies get played at Christmas time like the couple older Addams Family movies ![]()
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lostonearth35
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I watched Mickey's Christmas Carol when I was still a kid, where Goofy played Jacob Marley's ghost, where he'd be all spooky and dramatic one moment, but the next he'd be, well... Goofy.
But the part where Scrooge meets the Ghost of Christmas Future (played by Pete), and Scrooge finds out that he's now dead, that was pretty scary. For a Disney cartoon, anyway. Pete makes Scrooge fall into the open grave and Scrooge is hanging on while there's smoke and flame at the bottom, the gateway to Hell maybe, and then Scrooge falls in screaming "I'LL CHANGE!!" But of course, it was either all just a dream or the ghosts decided to give Scrooge a chance to redeem himself.
Here's a fun fact, Scrooge McDuck first appeared in a Disney comic that was a spoof of A Christmas Carol. But it wasn't until years later that he replayed the part again in the animated version.
I have not read the story, only seen it, and there are so many film productions and radio productions.
It has all the hallmarks of a horror story.
Scrooge's partner, Marley, comes out of nowhere, heavy chains hanging from him, His jaw tied shut, something I thought looked scary when I was little, but had NOT IDEA what that was about. Now I know. Funeral customs. When I was little, I thought Marley had a tooth or headache.
When I was little, I found the Spirit of Christmas Past to be pleasant and to be honest, boring. As a man in his sixties, and with more perspective on life's memories, hindsight and regrets are another kind of horror.
Christmas present wasn't particularly scare, until the robes were lifted to review cringing children.
Christmas yet to come. I always just believe this was death, even as a child. I honestly had no idea what was going on with the stealing of the curtains. As a child, I did not realize they were looting his home while his body was still there. As CockneyRebel pointed out in another post, Christmas Yet To Come is silent. It reveals nothing other than the inevitable. The version CockneyRebel saw, CYTC had red eyes. The versions I've seen the face of facial features are never show. The first version I saw, there was a hood with darkness within. Wooo.. Excellent.
It's a scary cautionary Christmas, tale and directors and producers turn the horror vibe up or down. There is a musical, isn't there? I'm not going to look that up.
So I need to stop procrastinating.
I was looking for a picture, which I found, but also found this.
From a different slant, and more in depth. (I think this is excellent.)
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Last edited by pcgoblin on 30 Dec 2025, 4:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.
The only version I can recall seeing is the Blackadder version. I thought it was a disappointing addendum to the series but not a horror movie.
Even that one seems sentimental at core...
Can horror movies be sentimental?
A true horror would be an alternate ending where Scrooge, as a stand in for a modern billionaire, learns nothing and decides he was too soft on the poor so he doubles down with renewed fight put back into his old bones to go out and get the government to put the poor between a metallic slab and a harder place.
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This made me curious what genres A Christmas Carol would fall under. Apparently, ghost story, Novella and Gothic Literature.
I'd argue that both Ghost Story and Gothic Lit fall under Horror. Cautionary tales also tend to fall under Horror in general because they serve as a warning to the audience.
However, despite the horror elements, it has a happy ending. It's considered to be a wholesome story. I think that horror can be sentimental.
*Nods*
A Christmas Carol has a classic positive character arc. Scrooge becomes a better person at the end of the story.
If he were to go through the story and learn absolutely nothing or even become worse, that would be a negative character arc. It would also make the story quite cynical, bitter and bleak. Going from 'It's never too late to change' to 'Power corrupts and those who benefit from the system will not seek to change it'.
I'd class it as spooky enough that it makes a point, but not horrifying. The type of light horror that you might tell around a campfire. So, yes, I think it could be considered a horror movie.
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Muppet Christmas Carol... fun but definately not horror.
Michael Caine as Scrooge, one of my favourite (screw you spelling, when it is about Dickens it remains) renditions but I am a biased muppet fan... the only one were Mrs Piggy -definitely mrs here - is not just 'not annoying' but even hot... (I should not admit that in public...)
Think today the original dracula would now be more classed as Gothic lit than real horror... (and twilight horrib, a minor difference)
CockneyRebel
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Muppet Christmas Carol... fun but definately not horror.
Michael Caine as Scrooge, one of my favourite (screw you spelling, when it is about Dickens it remains) renditions but I am a biased muppet fan... the only one were Mrs Piggy -definitely mrs here - is not just 'not annoying' but even hot... (I should not admit that in public...)
Think today the original dracula would now be more classed as Gothic lit than real horror... (and twilight horrib, a minor difference)
I forgot that the Muppets did a version.
I have seen versions that were not scary at all, some cartoon versions.
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