Unexpected Christmas 2025 Movie Review
The film Unexpected Christmas (2025), directed by Michael Vaughn Hernandez and written by Cassandra Mann, is a festive, crowd-friendly holiday comedy-drama centered on the Scott family’s attempt at a picture-perfect Christmas reunion that rapidly unravels into chaos, emotional reckonings and unexpected transformations. The film opens with Momma Scott (Anna Maria Horsford) organizing what’s supposed to be a warm, joyful gathering—her daughter Marissa (DomiNque Perry) returns home from a breakup, only to find her ex-boyfriend Richard (Lil Rel Howery) arriving arm-in-arm with her estranged stepsister Kerry (Reagan Gomez‑Preston). The stage is set not merely for holiday cheer but for awkward reunions, romantic mix-ups, long-buried secrets and the inevitable clash between expectation and reality.
From the outset the film leans into familiar holiday tropes—the family gathering, the return home, the ex arriving uninvited—but it offsets them with a richer emphasis on dysfunction beneath the merriment. Marissa’s breakup provides the emotional fault line; Richard’s sudden presence with Kerry adds layers of awkwardness and competition; Kerry’s own scheme threatens to derail the entire celebration. What’s especially effective is that the film doesn’t pretend the Scott family is flawless. Momma Scott’s ambitious efforts to stage a flawless Christmas are undermined by the internal family dynamics—resentments, unresolved conflicts and individual wounds—that she either overlooks or hopes to smooth over with tinsel and turkey. This tension between the ideal and the actual is the heartbeat of the narrative.
Visually and tonally, the film presents a modest but effective holiday-setting: snow-touched family homes, cozy interiors, flashing lights, wrapping paper and sprawling gatherings. The setting serves as more than decoration: it reflects the burden of expectation, the weight of tradition and the façade many families carry into the season. The cinematography is not extravagant but comfortable, suffused with the gentle glow and warmth we expect from a holiday film, yet occasionally punctuated by sharper moments of discord—raised voices, hurt glances, secrets revealed. In that way, Unexpected Christmas strikes a balance between festive warmth and realistic emotional undercurrents.
The performances lean into the characters with sincerity. Anna Maria Horsford anchors the family matriarch role with both affection and fatigue: one senses Momma Scott’s genuine love for her family, but also her frustration with the patterns she inherits. Lil Rel Howery, as Richard, plays the ex-boyfriend returning with an unexpected partner, and he brings both comedic timing and protective warmth; the script allows him to oscillate between being the instigator of awkwardness and the person who ultimately confronts the mess. DomiNque Perry as Marissa plays the daughter stuck between wounded pride and familial loyalty, and Reagan Gomez-Preston as Kerry brings layers—initially antagonistic, then revealing vulnerability. The ensemble cast supports them well, offering side-characters who contribute to the clutter of the reunion rather than being strictly caricatures.
What the film does particularly well is weave multiple relational threads without insisting that every single conflict must be neatly resolved (though key ones are). The film’s pacing allows for comedic moments—quirky family members barging in, accidental secrets overheard—and more tender ones: admissions, reconciliations, realizations that the holiday isn’t about perfection but connection. There’s a sequence where Marissa invites a surprise guest of her own, which shifts the film’s focus from just Richard and Kerry to a more equal playing field of unpredictability.
This surprise guest device works to keep the story from becoming purely a two-sister rivalry; instead it expands the emotional radius of the film.
On the thematic level, Unexpected Christmas explores the idea that the best-laid plans often go awry—but that can be good. It suggests that Christmas, for many families, is less about the decorations and more about the willingness to endure the mess, the half-spoken grievances, the outdated traditions and the love that persists despite it all. The film doesn’t shy away from admitting that some of the pain we carry into the holidays is very real: breakup stress, stepsibling resentment, mismatched expectations. It presents holiday joy not as an absence of trouble, but as the capacity to accept trouble and still show up. That emotional honesty is one of the strengths of the film.
Still, the film is not without its limitations. While the ensemble approach gives breadth, some characters inevitably feel under-explored. Kerry’s motive for her “scheme” is touched on but could have been richer; Marissa’s emotional arc is solid but sometimes predictable. The narrative structure ultimately follows a familiar trajectory—initial tension rising to a climax (secret revealed, chosen surprise guest causes upheaval), then a soft resolution—but the familiarity may make parts of the film feel derivative. The challenge for any holiday ensemble film is balancing warmth and novelty, and at moments Unexpected Christmas leans more toward comfort than surprise. The overriding message—family matters, love wins, holiday chaos is part of life—is not revolutionary, though it is delivered with heart.
Another minor critique: the film’s ambition to include a “scheme” cooked up by a stepsister and the surprise guest device adds complexity, but it also adds clutter. The mid-act enters a zone where the number of characters and emotional subplots swell, and the narrative focus occasionally flickers among too many threads. For viewers looking for crisp, tightly crafted storytelling, this may feel like a distraction. The comedic beats and dramatic beats occasionally tug in different directions—the tonal shift from light comedy to relational drama is mostly smooth, but some moments feel slightly rushed or under-built. For instance, certain revelations happen just as the holiday dinner is about to begin, and the emotional weight of prior buildup could have been deeper.
The film’s resolution is broadly satisfying: key tensions are addressed, some relationships begin anew, and Momma Scott’s dream of a joyful family Christmas is salvaged (if not in the perfect way she envisioned). Yet the endings of a few side arcs are a bit soft-edged—less conclusive than one might expect. But in the spirit of the holiday genre, that’s arguably fine: sometimes what matters is hope and intention more than complete closure. In that sense, Unexpected Christmas aptly captures the imperfect yet redemptive spirit of family gatherings.
From the standpoint of audience appeal, Unexpected Christmas will likely hit the sweet spot for viewers looking for a holiday film with familiar elements (family, romance, reunion, secrets) but with a little extra depth of emotional realism and a diverse cast. Its casting of Howery and Brown (who is also executive producer) adds refreshed energy to the genre, and the film’s November release date positions it nicely as an early holiday season choice. On the other hand, for those who seek bold twisty plots, gritty realism, or radical reinventions of the holiday-genre formula, this may feel safe and comfortable rather than groundbreaking.
In the end, Unexpected Christmas affirms that sometimes the most “unexpected” parts of the season—ex-boyfriends arriving, surprise guests, schemes uncovered, stepsister rivalries—are exactly the moments that remind us of the true thrust of family and love. The film doesn’t promise perfection; it promises coming together in spite of everything. It is a holiday movie that doesn’t hide the mess under ribbons, but invites you to sit with it, laugh at it, and maybe forgive a little. For the audience willing to accept something a little more textured than standard holiday fluff, Unexpected Christmas delivers a cozy film with heart, humor and the gentle reminder that the real magic of Christmas lies not in what we plan, but in who shows up and what we’re willing to share.
In summary, Unexpected Christmas is a warm, moderately ambitious holiday feature that embraces family-drama under the guise of Christmas cheer, offers good performances and a relatable emotional core, while sacrificing some narrative sharpness in search of broad inclusivity and ease of sentiment. It may not reinvent the wheel of the holiday film genre, but it adds a polish of sincerity and a refreshing diversity to the seasonal lineup—and for many viewers that might be just the kind of “unexpected” Christmas they need.
