What comes to mind when imagining a wholesome Christmas movie that you can snuggle up and enjoy for a cozy night in? An odd yet sweet little reindeer who learns to believe in himself? Of course. A jolly snowman who comes to life with a magical hat? Sure thing! A massive, speeding train full of children that flies off the tracks and hurls onto a frozen lake, threatening to plunge the children to their icy deaths? No?! That doesn't sound like a fun little low-stakes Christmas movie to you?!? Yeah, me neither — but somehow The Polar Express still exists.
If you don't know anything about The Polar Express — then I'd first like to say how jealous I am that you made it through your childhood unscathed by such a spine-tingling tale of terror. Basically, The Polar Express is a magical train that appears on Christmas Eve to bring all the good little boys and girls who believe in Santa Claus to the North Pole. If you willfully ignore the kidnapping, then it sounds like it might be cute.
Let's talk about the absolutely rancid vibes of this movie that traumatizes children every holiday season since it cursed our screens back in 2004. This is not the wholesome family Christmas movie it claims to be. The Polar Express is a heart-racing, shudder-inducing, edge-of-your-seat horror movie, and here's why:
We start the movie with a decidedly eerie undertone right away. The energy is far from a cozy Christmas vibe and lands somewhere in Krampus territory. Try to tell me that this isn't the exact type of opening scene in a real horror movie. You can't!!
When the train arrives (jump scare), our main character gazes upon it as the soundtrack accompanying this moment plays looong, high-pitched squeals. I remember watching this as an impressionable child and thinking, "Why are they playing haunted house music?! I'm 10 and I'm scared." The tone feels like it's trying to build suspense instead of holiday wonder.
After our main character finds another kid's missing ticket, he tries to find its rightful owner and return it. To do this, he has to move between train cars. He soon finds himself outside, hanging off the edge, exposed to the elements, and honestly on the verge of death for one of many times in this movie for children. Very cool!
He ends up losing the ticket when it flies away into the wind. It lands softly onto the snow for a very brief peaceful moment until yet ANOTHER jump scare takes place with the train WOOOOSHING in and laying down its horn. We are 20 minutes into this movie and there have been enough jump scares, thanks!
With her ticket missing, the girl gets taken away by the conductor. Another child on the train says that the conductor is going to "throw her off the back of the train." Excuse me?!? They've been rolling miles and miles through the wilderness at this point!! RIP, girl.
Luckily, our main character sees that the missing ticket has flown back onto the train. He grabs it and chases down the conductor to try and ask him to, y'know, NOT throw the girl off of the train?? I don't know how he managed to make me more stressed out than I was watching him wobble between train cars, but he did when he ended up on TOP of the train.
When he's on top of the train, the cold winds are blasting...but whom he discovers there gives me even more chills than the weather. Instead of finding the girl and returning her ticket, he happened upon this CGI nightmare of a man who speaks in riddles and evil laughs maniacally.
This creepy man is so strange that the kid becomes convinced that this is all a dream. It leads to this extremely intense moment where he tries to wake up by pinching himself and throwing snow on his face, which went on for waaaay too long.
Bad news! He's not dreaming. Good news! He finds the girl whose ticket went missing and she was not thrown off the train — instead, she was told to operate the train while the conductor inspected it. I mean, I guess that's...better?
Once the conductor returns and the girl is relieved of her treacherous train operation duties, the train, y'know, suddenly speeds down a frozen lake. Because of course it does. Can we have a single moment of peace in this children's movie?! I am begging.
This is SO STRESSFUL. A Charlie Brown Christmas would never do this to me.
Remember that random man who lived at the top of the train? He decided to jump back into the mix to save the girl from being thrown off the side of the train — a fate this movie seems to be Final Destination style pushing for. This is objectively a bro move of him, but then he made it weird by creepily "shushing" and straight-up evaporating into nothingness. This guy cannot be cool.
The train finally lands back on the tracks and everyone seems safe...for a second. There's no time to unpack the near-death experience before enduring another unnecessarily harrowing scene that includes a classic horror movie staple: dolls. I was so relieved that everyone was back inside the train (finally) but that relief was short-lived because they had to walk through a car full of "rejected toys," aka big ol' room of dolls!
Okay. So. They are no longer fighting for their lives on the outside of the train. They've gone through the spooky doll room (I promise there was no need for that scene except to give 10-year-old me nightmares). Guess what happens next?! They make it to the North Pole! That means everything is going to calm down now, right? ... Right?!
Of course not!! All of the other kids get off the train and prepare to meet Santa, but the two main characters realize a kid has been left behind so they get BACK ON THE DEATH TRAIN. Naturally, there's a malfunction aaand the caboose detaches from the rest of the locomotive so the kids go speeding to experience another near-death experience. The train finally comes to a stop at what appears to be an icy abyss that the kids then have to walk across, tightrope style. Who wrote this, and why do they hate children?!?
At this point in the movie, the main characters are separated from the rest of the group after their train car sped off into the bowels of town. Something important to mention is how throughout this entire part, there is jazzy Christmas music playing on a record player that occasionally glitches...it just feels...haunted. They're just wandering around the North Pole — which is giving off more of a Silent Hill vibe than a holly jolly Christmas land of joy.
So much has happened in ONE HOUR of this movie. At this point, I wasn't even phased when the kids randomly got stuck in a giant sack of presents and found themselves soaring hundreds of feet above town. These kids are way too resilient. They'll be fine.
The kids escape safely, but then more chaos ensues when the giant star topper for the North Pole Christmas tree FLIES off of it and almost leads to an elf massacre. The kids are finally safe, and now the elves are catching the Christmas hands?!? Not cool!!
When Santa arrives, the horror energy takes a turn for the culty when all of the elves break out into a very slow and unsettling version of "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town." It's genuinely chilling. It has the feel of when happy songs are remixed spookily specifically to be used in horror movies.
Okay, the last 15 minutes of the movie are actually pretty chill. It's really the only time in the entire film that it feels like a Christmas movie and not just a Hunger Games Christmas special where children are fighting for their lives. Somehow, the kids got back home on the terror train without plunging into an icy death — even though those tracks could not have been unfrozen by the time they were heading back...
Thank you for coming to my very important rant about a movie that came out 20 years ago. I still feel just as strongly at 29 as I did at 10 when I first watched it. Honestly, it gets even scarier every time. Anyway, I hope I convinced you to watch something actually wholesome this holiday season! You don't need this stress in your life! Buuut if you're a horror movie and train fanatic, then this is the perfect movie for you!!
