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On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.
For December 2024, we’re celebrating the end of the year with a stocking full of Strange Holiday TV Specials and Seasonal Midnight Movies.
First, read the BAIT: a weird and wonderful pick from any time in film or TV. Then, try the BITE: a breakdown of the movie or episode’s ending, impact, and any other spoilers you’d want.
The Bait: A Seasonal Celebration with a Midnight TV Miracle
Imagine it’s Christmas time, two million years in the future.
Mr. Sludgy (a talking, semi-robotic snowman) has you and several other bug-eyed children cuddled up in front of a roaring fire. Nestled into his armchair, he’s ready to tell you — and the human kids watching at home! — the story of “The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever.” It’s a petrifying tale of fascist alien invaders and violently jolly demi-gods… which no doubt baffled real parents when it aired on Nickelodeon in December 2002.
TV specials don’t always qualify as midnight movies, but the holidays can make the small screen more tempting to genre fans. When you combine legends of the North Pole with the storytelling rules of another universe, you’ve effectively forced a crossover event. Even when that’s done with kid viewers in mind, the results tend to skew more mature and favor those with a strong taste for fringe. In that way, “Worst X-Mas Ever” is a wild misnomer.
Created by Jhonen Vasquez, “Invader Zim” was always something of a tonal miracle in children’s entertainment. Too adult for even the darkest corners of Cartoon Network, but not quite the unbridled chaos then happening at Adult Swim, this gone-too-soon gem was in the middle of production on a second season at Nickelodeon before it got unplugged.
A bizarre Christmas special — involving a classic Zim scheme and a malfunctioning Santa suit — abruptly became the last episode of the show to premiere on TV. Several unreleased Season 2 episodes arrived later on DVD (and there was that Netflix revival in 2019!), but the ridiculous stinger to this wintery chapter was the cult favorite’s only coda for many years.
Holiday specials usually suggest longevity, but “The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever” feels so oddly fitting as a Season 1/series finale hybrid that you almost couldn’t plan it better. Nothing particularly objectionable happens in the episode (certainly not when compared to, say, the organ harvesting installment), but the surreal and cynical festivities are emblematic of what made “Invader Zim” so wonderful it looks almost doomed in retrospect.
Struggling to understand human culture as always, Zim can’t figure out how to make money during the holidays. A legion of Santa performers collecting donations gives the pint-sized alien the bright idea to become the man in red. And soon — following in the cinematic footsteps of giants like Jack Skellington, The Grinch, and Art the Clown (yikes!) — Zim disguises himself in an artificially intelligent costume and steals Christmas.
He’s got Gir (his mint-green robot/fake dog/sidekick/fan favorite) dressed as an extra cuddly elf by his side. And for a while, all seems well. Then, per “Invader Zim” tradition, our hapless anti-hero takes things way too far and all kinds of candy-coated hell breaks loose.
In this universe, humanity worships Santa as if he as an all-powerful interplanetary dictator. A handful of lines even suggest that he’s close to an actual Christ figure (which, in the spirit of finales, what a high note to end on!). After Zim announces his arrival as the “real” Santa, the globe exalts him as their cherry-nosed savior and treat his visit like a Second Coming.
Only a few citizens question so-called Zim “Santa” (Zanta?!) when he informs them that he’ll be taking over the planet… and, after several unnecessary steps involving not one but two teleporters, killing every human on Earth. Sudden technical difficulties with Zim’s suit should be spectacle enough, but the arrival of his archnemeses Dib and Dib’s sister Gaz push the increasingly robot-heavy action saga into full-on midnight territory.
Animation scholars have picked apart this show’s history as a unique case study from an evolving time in kids’ entertainment. Sure, the reported tension between “Invader Zim” creatives and Nickelodeon execs keeps the show interesting in that countercultural curiosity sense. But watching this timeless episode, you get the impression that it really hangs on because of its near-magical intuition and scene-by-scene adaptability.
Watching a skilled entertainer reconcile opposing elements introduced into their story’s reality by holiday lore can be wonderfully rewarding. (Is Santa real in the “Bob’s Burgers” universe? How would Pee-Wee Herman bring Christmas to the “Playhouse”?) Good results push boundaries within the stories we already know, but the best results do that while reinforcing what makes these characters so great that they deserve to meet Santa.
Co-written by Vasquez and Eric Truehart, “The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever” is a strong series’ entry point, a reasonable enough finale when it had to be, and worthy of an annual rewatch. It takes a special kind of zipper-teethed alien to make dialogue this goofy show flecks of genuine menace — a challenge made even tougher when said alien is sticking his face out from inside a bigger, squishier Santa face! And yet, Zim saying “TO THE JINGLE JAIL WITH THE NONBELIEVER!” hits almost as hard as this episode’s original Christmas carol.
If you’re not singing it along yet, you will be in a half hour. Now, “Bow down, bow down before the power of Santa… or be crushed, be crushed by his jolly boots of doom.”
“Invader Zim” is now streaming on Paramount+.
The Bite: … And to All a Very Merry Easter Platypus!
Revisiting any media you adored in childhood can be an emotional minefield, but I rarely meet a fellow “Invader Zim” kid who doesn’t seem earnestly excited whenever this show comes up. That’s something you can attribute in part to how well it has aged: an inspiring testament to creative vision and show that know what they are no matter the season.
Acutely self-aware but nevertheless unapologetic, Vasquez steers his surreal and cynical midnight treasure just to the point of mainstream acceptability here. The episode leaves Season 1’s dramatic tension if not unscathed, at least with the glorious war wound that is the wild end to Zim’s “X-Mas” affair. Between the Easter Platypus (an iconic anti-capitalist middle finger!) and the Darth Santa doomsday wraparound (wait, Mr. Sludgy the snowman lives in a protective dome… like a snow globe?!), the script is packed front to end with clever written surprises. That’s supported by visual-only narrative arcs and gags, clearly brought to life along the storyboarding process, that gift-wrap more reasons to revisit.
Did you see that elementary school teacher get so excited about Christmas her heart literally exploded? And could you tell that Professor Membrane had the same voice (“I’ve never trusted that jolly fat man!”) even as a 4-year-old obsessed with Uranium 238? Also, do you know how or why the country ever ended up thinking an escaped zoo animal was Santa? Or if that one guy who was so upset when he found out it wasn’t is… OK?
You’d miss many of these puzzling moments as a kid, but when appreciated as an adult, the complexity gives away an admirably intense vibe of defiance from this artistic team. Refusing to get boxed in — even at the holidays — “Invader Zim” is proof that no matter the intended age group, some stories have to be naughty as well as nice.
IndieWire After Dark publishes midnight movie recommendations every Friday night. Read more of our deranged suggestions…
- Hulu’s ‘Pilgrim’ Is So Finger-Lickin’ Outrageous It Will Make You Thankful for Streaming History
- Fran Kranz Reflects on ‘Bloodsucking Bastards’: An Undead ‘Office Space’ Worth Reviving
- “The War of the Gargantuas” Dares to Ask Which Kaiju Monsters Have Souls
- Want an Even Worse “Carrie”? Sean Byrne’s “The Loved Ones” Belongs on Your Dance Card
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