The Last Christmas
2021 · 11m
Directed by Ryan Port
Genres: comedy, dark comedy, horror
Tones: absurdist, dark, darkly comic
An 8-year-old girl's plan to capture Santa Claus to prove he exists goes horribly wrong, leaving her and her older sister to dispose of the evidence before anyone finds out they killed Christmas.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A premise that commits to its own absurdity without winking—an 8-year-old's Santa trap that escalates into a crime disposal thriller is exactly the kind of high-concept inversion that makes people uncomfortable before they realize they're laughing. This is the film the consensus would politely pass on, and that's precisely why it works.
The film's tonal control across its 11 minutes—balancing child logic against genuine stakes, comedy against the weight of consequence—shows craft awareness of how to sustain a genre hybrid without collapsing into either camp or nihilism. It situates itself knowingly within the dark Christmas comedy lineage while resisting the sentimental gravitational pull that genre usually demands.
The singular choice here is treating the sisters' mounting dread with the same visual and emotional specificity you'd give a heist procedural—the film's economy comes entirely from committing to the logistics of the problem rather than underlining the 'dark humor' with reaction shots or explanatory cuts.