11 Movies That Will Cure Your Holiday Hangover

The holidays are a fantastic time of family, friends, too many sweets, and more drinks than any one person should consume in a month. But it’s also a time of sentimentality, romantic comedies, and all things red and green. Chances are, the movies you’ve been watching for the month of December have been your garden variety holiday movies, with lots of fluffy coats and steaming hot chocolate and do-overs for even the most wicked of Scrooges. But after a month of watching movies that are rife with happy endings and predictable storylines, I like to spend my January recovering with a healthy dose of dark humor, tragic relationships, and unstoppable action. Call me a glutton for punishment, but I prefer to spend my January coming back down to reality. Thankfully, there are plenty of movies coming out on Netflix in January that will help you get over that hangover from all of that holiday joy.

These movies range from hilarious to horrifying, from eye-opening to cringe-worthy. But what they all have in common is the ability to bring you back to reality after a month of flying high on sugar and elves on the shelves. Let’s be real: after an entire season of sweet sentiments and make believe, January is the perfect month to get real about the world, the people in it, and the long, cold winter ahead of us all.

1. Chelsea Does

Each of these four documentaries is a feature-length film starring Chelsea Handler as she takes on some pretty huge topics like marriage, racism, and Silicon Valley. Just the thing you need to bring you back down from that Christmas cookie sugar high.

2. Frozen Planet

It’s like Planet Earth but only the really, really cold parts. ‘Cuz guess what? Sometimes the world is a horrible, cold, desolate place. Time to get used to it.

3. How to Change the World

If there’s one thing that will help you get over all of that wishing and dreaming for a magical Christmas, it’s a clear look at the beginning of Greenpeace and their attempt to stop the atomic bomb. Nothing says welcome back to reality better than the H-Bomb, y’all.

4. We Need To Talk About Kevin

If you got lost in a sea of adorable children and Christmas wishes this December, you’re going to want to watch this movie with one hand over your eyes. Kevin is a troubled kid whose mother isn’t quite sure whether he’s evil or something else entirely. This movie will make you never want to have kids. Hell, it might make you never want to look at another kid again. Babysitters and nannies of the world, you’ve been warned.

5. Adult World

A poet becomes a clerk in an adult bookstore. If that doesn’t sound like the premise of a movie that is the opposite of the holiday cheer you’ve been watching for the last month, I don’t know what is.

6. The Last Five Years

Relationships aren’t all White Christmas-es and Love, Actually. Curl up this January with this movie musical about a relationship that deteriorates over the span of five years. ‘Cuz that’s more likely than a cast of ten magically ending up happy over the course of the holiday season.

7. The Overnight

It took me a good hour to pick my jaw up off the floor after seeing this movie about two couples who get together for a dinner party that goes terribly array. I’m just going to leave it at that so as not to ruin all of the… fun… for you.

8. Training Day

A police drama about a veteran officer and a rookie cop in an inner-city narcotics unit where no one can be trusted? Somebody get the popcorn.

9. Curve

Because nothing says the seasonal merriment is over like hitchhiker horror movies.

10. 2 Fast 2 Furious

Sex, money, and fast cars beat Christmas any day.

11. Constantine

A detective who has literally been to hell and back? Sounds like Christmas with my family.

So when the sugar finally starts to go to your head and you reach the point where if you hear one more Christmas carol you will scream, line these movies up in your queue and come back to the cold, harsh reality of living. It might not be as magical as life was in December, but it doesn’t have any of those sugar headaches either.

Image: Duplass Brothers Productions