What was with the weird ending? Did the creators think the brother strangling his killer sibling was too dark?

In the future, please use the "report" button when reporting something that needs to be fixed/deleted or otherwise looked at.

For now, I'll take a look at this. But at first glance your suggestion seems like the "tagline". From what I found online, the movie was released as "Christmas Evil" (title change done by distributor without the writer/directors consent).

@alltimemarr said: For now, I'll take a look at this. But at first glance your suggestion seems like the "tagline". From what I found online, the movie was released as "Christmas Evil" (title change done by distributor without the writer/directors consent).

According to the director Lewis Jackson: “When I made the movie it was called ‘You Better Watch Out’. It went through a series of weird distribution changes and at that point someone took the movie and retitled it without my permission.” This is from his commentary track with John Waters. He recounts a similar tale on his solo commentary track.

Some movies get retitled after they're picked up for distribution following initial public screenings. It looks like this was the case here. It may be worth nothing that the film is listed as ‘You Better Watch Out’ on both the ‘other’ site and TCM.com as well as by Leonard Maltin in his movie guide (he lists ‘Christmas Evil’ as its video release title). True, none of these three is actually free of mistakes, but I guess it's noteworthy they're in agreement on this one.

I investigated this in detail and made the changes on December 24 as you can see by the changelog. However, the report was private so that's why it's not showing. I'll post back here in a moment.

Update: The user must have deleted the report as it is nowhere to be found. Bummer.

However, the problem here is when a movie gets a title change. We don't want English to English translations and that means a movie can have a festival screening with one title, and then it is picked up and released with a different title. So in order to not get stuck with a festival title as original title, the title at first theatrical release (or other proper release) become the original title. I can guarantee you that if a big enough movie had a title change after the premiere, IMDb would change the original title as well.

@lineker said: However, the problem here is when a movie gets a title change. We don't want English to English translations and that means a movie can have a festival screening with one title, and then it is picked up and released with a different title. So in order to not get stuck with a festival title as original title, the title at first theatrical release (or other proper release) become the original title.

Nothing wrong with English-to-English translations - as long as titles are different. Among the many things in recent years that made me despair over IMDb is their AKA section with no shortage of English AKA titles identical to the main title...

As for the original title, I guess it depends on how you define it. IMDb, the last time I checked which was years ago, said they considered the original title to be the title that appeared on screen at the movie's first official public screening. What you seem to be going for is the title under which the movie is best known or was most widely released (which, in this case, is indeed ‘Christmas Evil’ - even John Waters who claims to be its #1 fan says in the commentary he only ever knew of this title). This is fair enough, but that's not necessarily the original title, as it were.

I can guarantee you that if a big enough movie had a title change after the premiere, IMDb would change the original title as well.

Actually, no, IMDb does not ‘change’ the movie's original title per se. What it does is it adds a new title or reissue title and, if needed, flags it as IMDb display title to show as the movie's main title over the original title. A ‘big enough’ movie where this is the case is actually ‘Star Wars’. Even though it premiered and first ran in theaters as such, IMDb decided on ‘Episode IV’ thing as its main ‘display title’, but ‘Star Wars’ is still treated as its original title (and is shown as the main title if you have this option selected in site settings - I do, which is why ‘Christmas Evil’ shows up as ‘You Better Watch Out’ for me, but if I'm not logged in, IMDb defaults to the other title).

Having two English titles is confusing and not a good technical solution since it's not a translation. We are aware of the way IMDb uses its original titles and we use the same policy, with this exception for some titles. Using working/festival titles as original titles is simply wrong, though, even if the movie premieres at a film festival. It makes little sense to carry such a title as the original title. And IMDb is not always using this policy anyway. See the first Harry Potter movie for a notable example where they use the US title as original title instead of the correct original title: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0241527/ Our version is correct: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/671-harry-potter-and-the-philosopher-s-stone

Wouldn't it just make more sense then to change the "title" field (on all films) from saying "original title" to "theatrical/wide release title" or something like that? Or just have two separate fields for each of these?

I agree that it makes more sense to have "Christmas Evil" be the title that this film is listed under (since that's what it's best known as), but the field that it's written in shouldn't say "original title" because that's not a correct statement. If you watch the blu-ray version of the movie, the title screen at the beginning even says "You Better Watch Out."

IMDb usually lists the original title of a film underneath the theatrical/wide release title (if they are different). Is this something that perhaps TMDb could do?

If La La Land had one festival screening as La La Country, then was changed to La La Land, you would want us to keep La La Country as the title here for all eternity? I don't think that is even an option. The current system with translations is the core of this website so it would be a pity to change it all because of this issue. If you want the changes for home viewing purposes, it would probably be easier for you to make a manual .nfo change for these titles. Another notable one is What If (one festival screening as The F Word.)

If you watch the blu-ray version of the movie, the title screen at the beginning even says "You Better Watch Out."

Nobody doubts that the first title for the movie, before it was released, was You Better Watch Out. The director has said so himself. Just as many movies have many other titles before release (working titles, festival titles). The problem arise with titles that are officially changed after a premiere screening. If you could come with proof that they actually did screen Christmas Evil with the on screen title "You Better Watch Out" for the theatrical run, that would be proof to change the title here. But since the director was so angry I think the on screen title must have been Christmas Evil at that time. Still, it would be quite incredible if they didn't bother to change the on screen title.

Note: I will be back late on Sunday or Monday so no quick reply here.