My wife’s grandmother was watching one such movie recently during a visit.
CW: Emotional abuse.
spoiler
It is about some HOA president (yes, that’s how the movie describes him over and over, as a full time job) that keeps showing his romantic interest in the leading feeemale character by fining her and citing her for insufficient holiday decorations and other such "why don’t you smile more 
" abusive shit for the first half of the movie.
The rest is other people in the Black Hole Sun music video worthy town passive-aggressively reminding that feeemale character how the HOA president was looking at her while she scoffs and rejects the abuse… until she doesn’t. And that’s the happy ending.
Scary shit. It’s intersectional: providing what the demographic wants and expects and further normalizing and expanding upon it.
Is there any conceit given that insufficient holiday decorations is absurd?
I had a similar moment recently while staying with my mom who was recovering from a stroke. She was watching this Netflix show, Virgin River. All the male leads are veterans or criminals, and there’s a teenage boy who’s hiding from his girlfriend that he wants to join the marines. I’ve noticed that trend lately, trying to market joining the military as essentially rebellious, that other people just don’t get it. There are flashbacks where the lead is underfire, a comrade dies, he’s shook. Dunno who the enemy is, don’t see em, don’t know why they’re there. At one point a doctor tells the lead ex marine that it’s a shame that Iraq was just about oil, to which our hero pauses, then says I think it’s a little more complicated than that. And does not elaborate. MORE COMPLICATED HOW MAN?? And marine recruiters just appear everywhere a teen could be. Our female lead is a doctor from LA who goes to this small town and learns that it’s a good life and big city bad. There’s also a woman who becomes pregnant despite basically hating the guy now (the lead marine) and abortion is never mentioned. I mean of course it’s her choice but there’s sooo many complications brought on and the fact that she could not have the kids -they’re twins!‐ is completely absent.
Very hallmark-y, I had a similar feeling about it after seeing a good amount of it. An eldritch horror dressed in the skin of a holiday/lifestyle is a good way to describe it. I’d thought of letting it go with my mom being a boomer on the mend, until my millennial cousin stopped by, mentioned having recommended it to her, and asked what I thought and isn’t it soooo gooood?
It really was presented as a “welcome to Christmas heaven town, the burden is on you to fit in” thing where resistance from the outsider was the problem.
I think at a spiritual level, the most deeply invested Burgerlanders really do see the death and killing and dying as the point in a way that transcends words. Death cult shit.
That’s so bizarre. I had thought that maybe, though still bad, it was a situation of “oh, she’s cute, I’ll make up a citation to talk to her.”
I mean, it is hallmark, so they need to peddle their bullshit wares, but that’s just so blatantly consumerism, and that the message may be taken up by real people is so unsettling.
You’re right about the death cult thing. There’s no reason, only “respecting the dead” and any questioning of that is an invitation to join the cult in is fully realized form.
Holy shit, it’s Christmas With The Kranks without the irony