Why Black Doves Made Me Realize How Much I Hate Holiday Movies

From brain rot to awakening

The Oxford English Dictionary Word of this year is brain rot, as defined in the following way:

Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.

This definition made me think about Holiday movies.

Like so many others, I turn to streaming services (I don’t own a TV) for relaxing entertainment. Life is hard and heavy, and I have so many unresolved problems that I feel it’s only justified to search for an escape route out. What better escape destination is there at Christmas time than movies with a Christmas theme?

Geography plays a part in this as well. I live in a country where the sun abandons us for many months in winter. This period is known as the Kaamos—polar night. There’s no daylight, only a dim, endless twilight. The lack of light makes one melancholy, even depressed and this is where Christmas comes in handy.

For those of us at the mercy of Kaamos, Christmas is a vital festival of light. We need it to survive! I love Christmas lights, candles, and music.

Hallmark-style holiday movies have also had a special place in our lives since streaming services were introduced in my country. Curling up in front of the screen with a mug of cocoa or “glögi” (mulled wine) is an appealing way to spend the dark evenings. There is nothing like watching romance bloom in a festive atmosphere in the mystical Christmas wonderland to lift your spirits - and Holiday Movies deliver.

Or kind of deliver.

Because I am now wondering if all they deliver is brain rot.

Ding dong

Holiday movies are notorious for lacking a proper plot. Familiar events follow one another in a predictable sequence within a remarkably similar, over-the-top sugary syrupy festive setting. There are no surprises. The characters offer nothing new. The leads are always basically the same woman and man with minor cosmetic changes. By the end, they get united in love, which is the only surprising element in this predictability extravaganza because they have no chemistry - and how could they? They have no souls. They are as hollow as Christmas ornaments. Ding dong.

At some point, the fake snow, synthetic reindeer sweaters, imitation eggnog, counterfeit love, and the sugar-coated, artificial reality that defines these dizzying excuses for movies stopped giving me what I sought. Instead of offering light in the darkness, they led me from the frying pan into the fire—a limbo of sorts. After watching, I felt brain-dead. I was worse off. My melancholy deepened. The feeling was akin to staring at too many AI-generated images.

The Oxford English Dictionary gave my condition a name: brain rot.

Black Doves fly

Here´s what I´ve learned: Christmas movies aren’t harmless in their banality. They’re harmful. They lead to intellectual atrophy.

It took something unexpected and unpredictable for me to fully grasp this.

I stumbled upon Netflix’s series Black Doves. It is a Christmas show of sorts as it happens in London during the festive season. There are Christmas lights and parties and even carols included.

I started watching it because of rave reviews and an intriguing premise: the protagonist is a mother and political wife who is also a professional spy. She’s spying on her politician husband, who is also a father of her twins. I found that to be an extremely refreshing setup.

But watching Black Doves turned out quite challenging at first. I almost didn’t make it past the beginning because of the show’s violence.

There is So Much Blood. So Much Violence. Yaikes!

I am known to never watch violent series or movies. I’ve never seen their point. I’ve considered them harmful to mental health—and, in principle, I still do.

Which is why it’s astonishing that I would give Black Doves 5/5 if anyone asked for my review.

Why?

Life is a many splendored thing

In Black Doves, the minister’s wife and mother moonlights as a killer, heading out on missions after putting her kids to bed and posing at Christmas parties with her husband. She just drags the body into her backyard shed and washes the blood off her face before crawling into bed next to the hubby.

I do not know why exactly I find this so exhilarating.

My favourites though are the two young female psychopaths, Williams and Eleanor, who’ve been professional killers since their teens and casually gun people down as they go. They’re comedy gold!

I’m not joking!

Black Doves is chillingly violent but far more thrilling than the brain-rotting holiday movies churned out of the same plot factory.

It’s genuinely gripping and also moving. That´s what movies should do: move you, right?

Even killers are human, the series teaches us.

Samuel, the hitman played brilliantly by Ben Whishaw, is particularly poignant. The scene where he shields his boyfriend from gunfire, taking out a dozen masked men in the process, drenched in blood and tears streaming down his face, is nothing short of biblical.

After Black Doves, you might sleep poorly (especially if, like me, you binge a few episodes before bed), but it sparks thought, stirs emotion, and—most importantly—offers fresh perspectives on real life.

Life isn’t always beautiful, but even at its ugliest, there’s always some beauty to be found. Amidst cruelty, surprising humanity can rise. It gives you strange hope.

Black Dove is an antidote to brain rot. It wakes you up. It refreshes your brain.

A word of caution, though: the series is brutally violent and certainly not for everyone.

And for your information: I did try watching Lindsay Lohan’s latest Holiday venture, but no - I just couldn’t. It seems I now prefer fake blood to fake snow, fake love, fake Christmas, and fake feelings... Apparently, self-discovery is possible even later in life.

Have you watched Black Doves? What is your take on Holiday Movies? I´d love to know!