If you hop onto the Wikipedia page about movies around Easter, be prepared to be shocked. While you will find the cute holiday specials and animated Looney Tunes features, many Hollywood films on the holiday are from the horror genre. Even more so intriguingly, they have nothing to do with Jesus’ resurrection, but instead use the usually cuddly Easter Bunny as fodder for the spooks. Welcome to the bizarre and ever-expanding world of Easter horror!
What on Earth are Easter horror films?
As the name suggests, Easter horror films are horror features that revolve around the Christian holiday, mostly featuring a deranged or maniacal version of the Easter Bunny, transformed from the cute mascot to a killing machine. These films subvert the usual trope of Easter being a festival for children with colourful eggs and a fluffy bunny, turning it all into horror.
The trend came into mainstream with the 2006 film Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!, but there had been a few direct-to-video cult successes before that, too. Since then, there has been an abundance of films with the Easter Bunny as the antagonist, including successful franchises like Bunnyman, Beaster Day, and Easter Bunny.
But why would the Easter Bunny make for a convincing monster?
The Easter Bunny is a folkloric figure that is the mascot of Easter Sunday. It traces its origins to German Lutherans and became widely popular in the US starting in the 18th century. And while meant to be a cute and adorable figure, the Easter Bunny has been widely divisive. In the mid-20th century, as photography proliferated, Easter festivals would have mascots dressed up as Easter Bunnies clicking pictures with kids, similar to how Santa Claus would do it on Christmas. However, these humanoid bunnies, with their crude costumes, often ended up looking rather creepy.
Over the years, this even developed into a psychological condition called Leporiphobia, the fear of rabbits. The two things combined entered horror in the 80s and 90s, with humanoid bunnies playing some important roles in films like The Shining and Donnie Darko.
But it wasn’t until the 21st century that Hollywood took this fear of creepy bunnies to the extreme and turned the Easter Bunny into a monster. Since then, Easter Bunnies have murdered and gored their way through dozens of low-budget horror flicks, and continue to do so every Easter.