Why aren’t there more New Year’s Eve movies? Christmas rolls around each year like clockwork, and cinema obliges with an avalanche of killer Santas, antique moral arcs, and tinsel-coated nostalgia. But the calendar turning over is just as inevitable as reindeer on your roof — and, for better or worse in this particular political moment, New Year’s is more secular. Still, Hollywood hasn’t fully cracked the code.
The irony is that New Year’s Eve might be too specific in conceit to feel truly timeless on film. We count down to midnight annually, but the meaning of the moment is dictated by where we are culturally and emotionally. The promise of even the most opaque future almost always outshines a clear party in the present. If sunglasses manufacturers have taught us anything, it’s that any four-digit number can be bent into a brand-new way of seeing the world and sold on street corners every winter.
Still, there are great New Year’s Eve movies out there; you just have to know where to look! Rom-coms from Richard Curtis’ “About Time” to the late Garry Marshall’s pleasantly imperfect “New Year’s Eve” understand the holiday as a vector for destiny, and heading into 2026, there’s no better way to honor the passing of Rob Reiner than “When Harry Met Sally.” That’s a film that truly appreciates New Year’s as a spiritual deadline, one that the magic of love won’t let you outrun, no matter how hard you self-deny.
Elsewhere on this list, you’ll find zanier fare with lots of horror options thrown in. That includes a stop-motion holiday oddity you’ll be shocked you’ve never heard of, a handful of slashers hiding an iceberg of niche competitors beneath them, and more than a few movies that aren’t about New Year’s Eve at all, but use its rituals to explore their storytelling landscapes more richly. Most years feel like decades these days, and there’s no question that the constant stream of pop culture news is compressing contemporary life. On the bright side, that may be why these movies are getting more relevant, too.
Yes, New Year’s Eve films are instantly dated if the director chooses to say the date. But anxiety, expectation, and — above all — hope are universal. That’s the sparkling connective tissue running through these 15 picks, ranked not by spectacle but by a combined assessment of how well they understand New Year’s and what it feels like to see the future through them in this exact moment.
Just in time for 2026, here are the best New Year’s Eve movies to watch this season.
With editorial contributions by Wilson Chapman, Marcus Jones, Jim Hemphill, and Mary Pelloni.
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“Strange Days” (1995)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection No New Year’s Eve in history was quite as popping as Y2K, an event that still has a chokehold on science-fiction writers and nostalgic millennials to this day. But before it even happened, 1995’s “Strange Days” envisioned the changing of the millennium as a metaphor for a culture on the tipping point of dissent and disaster, drawing from the then-recent LA riots for a story of rebellion and fighting the power. In a militarized Los Angeles littered with violence and corruption, Lenny (Ralph Fiennes), a washed-up former cop turned peddler of the memory-capturing “SQUID” technology, isn’t anybody’s ideal of a hero. But when he uncovers a murder through his tech, he has to step up and spend the end of 1999 untangling a dangerous conspiracy.
It all culminates in a crowded New Year’s Eve celebration filled with confetti and partiers that’s messy, bloody, and not entirely a happy ending. But like all great movies about this holiday, “Strange Days” leaves a little opening for hope on the other side of the clock, as Larry finds redemption and a way to move on from his past. Most importantly, he caps off his year by kissing his friend Mace (Angela Bassett), in the most epic New Year’s Eve smooch ever put to film. —WC
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“When Harry Met Sally” (1989)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Midnight on New Year’s Eve has never come at a more perfect time than the moment in strikes in “When Harry Met Sally.” The 1989 film is a candidate for best rom-com ever made, and it understood the holiday as an unspoken deadline for fate like no work has since. The late Rob Reiner framed romantic relationships not as spectacles, but as a process of two individuals’ clumsy self-deception finally running out.
That last-act sprint through Manhattan with Billy Crystal works because it’s earned. Yes, it’s the product of years of emotional cowardice and self-imposed loneliness. But it’s also a moment of clarity that comes into focus through Meg Ryan’s watery eyes, brilliantly reflecting back a confetti-strewn dance floor as frenetic and joyous as her heart when her friend admits what they have is more than that. It’s picturesque, but it’s also a profound representation of compromise and fear. As a director, Reiner’s great trick was making emotional rigor feel effortless, and few movies have ever captured the terror and relief of saying you truly want somebody so elegantly. —AF
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“The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection “THE FUTURE IS NOW,” and it should include you watching “The Hudsucker Proxy.” Even measured against other screwball comedies, this 1994 entry from the Coen brothers stands out as a bizarre comedy experiment. It’s a meditation on the cyclical nature of capitalism and the gradual souring that comes with endlessly pursuing ambition. It’s also about the invention of the… hula hoop? Sure!
The story casts Tim Robinson as Norville Barnes, a lowly mail clerk in the 1960s who suddenly gets promoted to CEO of a major New York City company. He’s up against an investigative reporter (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and a pack of execs trying to maneuver a contractual loophole through his ill-conceived employment. But armed with his subtly genius invention (oooh, it’s a circle!), Barnes has a trick up his sleeve for the press and Hudsucker Industries. It’s a narrative turn-key that unlocks an outrageous tonal shift from the filmmakers and gifts New Year’s Eve audiences the closest thing we have to “It’s a Wonderful Life,” featuring an angel with a white ukulele and a truly impressive clock tower. —AF
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“Trading Places” (1983)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Starring Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, and Jamie Lee Curtis, John Landis’ “Trading Places” builds to one of the most satisfying New Year’s Eve climaxes in studio comedy history. Curtis’ Ophelia, a sharp, street-smart sex worker with unshakable confidence and emotional intelligence, emerges as the film’s moral center and one of the most iconic female characters of the 1980s. Her performance is fearless, funny, and groundbreaking, helping redefine what a leading woman in a mainstream comedy could be. The film still feels sharp, bold, and relevant. (Oh, and Murphy is pretty amazing, too.) —MP
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“The Apartment” (1960)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection A wistful, bittersweet ode to feeling lonely and disconnected during the holidays, Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” follows the turbulent personal lives of an insurance clerk and an elevator operator during the final weeks of the year, with the bulk of the narrative taking place on Christmas Day.
But it’s New Year’s Eve when Shirley MacLaine’s luminous Fran, surrounded by people in a pub singing “Auld Lang Syne,” finally comes to the epiphany that she loves the shy Baxter (Jack Lemmon) and breaks off her affair with the married company head Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray). For the couple, the holiday represents romantic possibilities and a new chapter — as Baxter also finds the courage to quit his job and leads them both back to his apartment to celebrate with champagne and a game of cards. Before “When Harry Met Sally,” no New Year’s Eve on screen had ever been so swoon-worthy.‚—WC
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“About Time” (2013)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection You can’t go wrong with a rom-com from Richard Curtis. 2003’s “Love Actually” cemented the British filmmaker as a master of holiday romanticism, using recognizable Christmas tropes as emotional scaffolding for a uniquely personal, even cutting look at the lovestruck cycles of humanity. With 2013’s “About Time,” Curtis turns the genre’s traditional New Year’s Eve formula on its head — starting with a midnight kiss between a time traveler (Domhnall Gleeson) and his love interest (Rachel McAdams) repeated ad infinitum — before expanding into a winsome reflection on the precious permanence of life. “About Time” doesn’t wield its sci-fi framing as a gimmick so much as a sensitive experiment, pushing the audience to contemplate what they do with their love, time, and treasured mistakes. —AF
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“Boogie Nights” (1997)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection For the first hour of its running time, Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic ode to pornography, disco dancing, and underappreciated character actors plays like the cinematic equivalent of a great party. Then, at the 69-minute mark (a sly dirty joke on PTA’s part?), we get an actual New Year’s Eve party to ring in 1980, and the movie’s tone and focus shift in a radical direction. Although the surface is celebratory, the portents are ominous, from Dirk Diggler’s first exposure to the drug that will nearly get him killed to porn financier Floyd Gondolli’s assertion that the industry is moving away from film (the worst possible outcome for celluloid purist PTA) and toward amateurs and home video. Pro tip: if you want to ring in the new year along with the cast, start the movie at 10:36 p.m. —JH
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“Ghostbusters II” (1989)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection “Ghostbusters II” earns its spot here by ending triumphantly on New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Directed by Ivan Reitman and led by Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, and Harold Ramis, the sequel leans less introspectively than its predecessor and more openly celebratory. That’s part of the appeal. Not every New Year’s Eve flick needs to be about quiet reflection; sometimes the night calls for slime and spectacle. Pairing this one with the more sentimental first film makes for a killer double-feature. —MP
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“Phantom Thread” (2017)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Though its instant-classic New Year’s Eve scene contains no dialogue outside of diegetic noise — instead opting to spotlight composer Jonny Greenwood’s elegant and stirring string score — the way Daniel Day Lewis’s Reynolds Woodcock walks into the holiday party, metaphorically hat in hand, as if he is psychically singing Ella Fitzgerald’s “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” to his beloved Alma (Vicky Krieps), communicates everything you need to know. That essence is the key to understanding what the Paul Thomas Anderson-helmed costume drama is all about, just in time for Oscars 2026. —MJ
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“Snowpiercer” (2013)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Few New Year’s Eve picks feel more galvanizing than “Snowpiercer,” Bong Joon Ho’s bruising rally cry for bothering to overthrow fascists — even as the world goes by at high speed and every inch of the natural landscape freezes to death. Yeah, this one is festive! A global-production miracle released more than a decade before Trump tried (and failed) to steer American cinema toward isolationism, this 2013 epic is a blunt reminder that resistance thrives across borders, and that no matter how badly some leaders may make you want to bash your head against the side of a moving train, you must press onward. Yes, Chris Evans is weirdly hot as a filthy revolutionary here, but he’s not nearly sexy enough to cure the nausea you’ll get from watching him and his fellow oppressed passengers eat… well, you’ll see. —AF
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“The Godfather Part II” (1974)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Sometimes you have to save your midnight kiss for your opps and enter the new year ready to shed any friend, foe, or family member standing in your way of being the Don. Often referred to as the greatest sequel of all time, the Francis Ford Coppola film’s most quoted scene happens to take place at a New Year’s Eve party in Havana, between “Dog Day Afternoon” co-stars Al Pacino and John Cazale. —MJ
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“The Substance” (2024)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection When blood starts dripping down the walls of a TV studio on New Year’s Eve in the last act of “The Substance,” the holiday feels more incidental to the body-horror masterpiece than it does thematically essential. Still, Coralie Fargeat’s bold, hyper-stylized filmmaking makes the countdown to showtime a dazzling, destructive dare that practically demands to be watched in sequins, champagne flute in hand. Demi Moore delivers a ferocious, Oscar-nominated comeback opposite Margaret Qualley as her unnervingly perfect other half, born from a bizarre medical procedure designed to make a “better” you. Beneath the cinematic excess of a woman torn in two is a simple, warped fairytale about balance and reinvention with some sobering advice for anyone feeling ambitious in the new year. —AF
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“Into the Dark: Midnight Kiss” (2019)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Too often, we treat last century’s slashers as automatically superior. That nostalgia bias is an endorsement of celluloid but its sells modern entries short, and 2019’s “Midnight Kiss” remains one of the strongest picks from Hulu and Blumhouse’s gone-to-soon “Into the Dark” anthology of TV movies. Set against a New Year’s Eve trip from West Hollywood to Palm Springs, the bubbly melodrama folds its body count into a distinct LGBTQ found-family story about risky intimacy and vulnerability provoking a killer in the shadows. It also spotted talent early, giving Lukas Gage room to shine years before his breakout. Lean and playful, “Midnight Kiss” understands the genre’s pleasures without apology. —AF
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“Rudolph’s Shiny New Year” (1976)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection 1976’s “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year” is what happens when the Seasonal TV Special Industrial Complex goes unchecked, stares into the existential void of barely-there New Year’s lore, and invents its own profoundly disconcerting holiday cosmology from scratch. This time travel-heavy sequel to the stop-motion classic strands Rudolph in a deranged archipelago of cavemen, nursery rhymes, and Benjamin Franklin types who, I guess, just rule over 1776… forever? None of it makes sense, and the stakes are inexplicably apocalyptic. But as a tipsy (read: drunk) New Year’s watch, it’s a delightful viewing endurance test that confirms New Year’s panic as canonically and existentially unhinged. —AF
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“Terror Train” (1980)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Roger Spottiswoode’s directorial debut is wildly imperfect. Shaggy, mean, and more than a little ridiculous. Still, “Terror Train” is the definitive New Year’s Eve slasher, and you won’t see gag glasses (you know, the ones with the nose, eyebrows, and mustache?) the same way after the credits roll. Other holiday horrors, like the supernatural “Bloody New Year,” are scrappier or more playful. But none land the uniquely anxious vibe of the celebration with the same blunt force.
Set on a packed party train hurtling toward midnight, the production weaponizes masks, anonymity, and momentum — turning celebration into confinement and laying essential track for later momentum pushers like “Snowpiercer.” Crucially, it also shows “Trading Places” star Jamie Lee Curtis at her most confidently nervy, anchoring the chaos with her already established “Halloween” fame and enduring reputation as a final girl. If genre films thrive on everyday fears, “Terror Train” is also a fresh reason to dread public transportation year-round. —AF