Your Living Room Isn't Ready for Netflix's December Drops

It is December 22, 2025. If you are reading this, you have officially entered the panic zone of holiday shopping. You have three days. The shipping windows are slamming shut, and the shelves are looking picked over. But here is the good news: you don't need to buy a random gadget that will end up in a junk drawer by February. You need to lean into what everyone is actually going to be doing for the next two weeks.

We are all going to be sitting on the couch.

WIRED just dropped their list of the best movies on Netflix for December, and the lineup is genuinely heavy. We are talking about Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Guillermo del Toro’s long-awaited Frankenstein, and the annual re-watch of Klaus. This isn't just background noise content; these are event movies.

The problem? Most people watch these cinematic masterpieces on setups that don't do them justice. If you watch Benoit Blanc solve a murder through the tinny speakers of a laptop, or try to appreciate the gothic shadows of Frankenstein with a glare-filled screen, you are doing it wrong.

This week, I’m skipping the novelty gifts. Instead, let’s talk about the hardware and accessories that upgrade the "Netflix and Chill" experience from a passive activity into a proper home theater event.

The Soundbar Intervention

I have said it a thousand times, and I will say it again: modern televisions are miracles of picture quality and tragedies of audio engineering. As screens got thinner, the space for speakers disappeared. It is simple physics. You cannot get rich, room-filling sound from a speaker the size of a stick of gum pointing at the wall behind your TV.

With Wake Up Dead Man dropping, dialogue is everything. The Knives Out films are dense, fast-paced, and layered with clues. If you are constantly turning the volume up for whispering and down for explosions, you need a soundbar.

If you are looking for a last-minute gift (for yourself or someone else), skip the cheap $50 tubes. They aren't much better than the TV speakers.

The Sweet Spot: Look for the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) or the latest mid-range Vizio M-Series. The Beam is my go-to recommendation because it’s compact, the dialogue clarity feature actually works, and it connects via WiFi, so it doesn't interrupt your phone notifications if you’re casting music. It transforms a movie from something you watch to something you hear.

Mastering the Mood: Bias Lighting

Let’s talk about Frankenstein. Guillermo del Toro does not make bright, sunny movies. He deals in shadows, deep blacks, and rich textures. Watching this in a pitch-black room actually causes eye strain because your iris is constantly adjusting between the dark room and the bright screen. Conversely, watching it with the overhead lights on washes out the image.

The solution is bias lighting. This is a strip of LEDs that goes on the back of the TV and shines against the wall. It sounds like a gimmick, but it is an optical trick that works wonders. It raises the ambient light behind the screen just enough to stop your pupils from dilating too much, which makes the blacks on your screen perceive as "blacker" (richer contrast) and reduces headaches.

The Pick: Govee makes the most accessible versions of this tech. Their camera-based systems (which read the screen colors and match the lights to the action) are fun, but for a pure cinephile experience, a simple, static 6500K white light strip is often better and less distracting. It’s a cheap upgrade—usually under $80—that makes a $500 TV look like a $1,000 TV.

The Snack Ritual: Ditch the Microwave

Klaus has quietly become the best Christmas movie of the last decade. It’s charming, visually stunning, and demands a comfort watch setup. This brings us to the most overlooked component of the movie marathon: the snacks.

Microwave popcorn is convenient, but it is also terrible. It’s oily, salty in a chemical way, and leaves a film on the roof of your mouth. If you want to gift someone a legitimate upgrade to their movie nights, get them a stovetop popcorn popper.

The Classic: The Whirley Pop. It has been around forever for a reason. It uses a hand crank to keep the kernels moving, meaning you pop every single kernel without burning any of them. It takes about three minutes—barely longer than the microwave—and the taste difference is night and day. Pair this with a jar of high-quality kernels (Amish Country Popcorn is a solid brand usually available on Amazon with fast shipping) and some Flavacol (the yellow salt movie theaters use), and you have won Christmas.

The "Do Not Buy" Warning

Since we are talking about screens, I need to give you a piece of advice that might hurt sales but will save your wallet. Do not buy a television right now.

I know the sales look tempting. You see a 65-inch 4K screen for a price that seems too good to be true. It usually is. The "holiday derivative" models—specific SKUs made just for Black Friday and Christmas—often have fewer ports, worse processors, and dimmer screens than the standard models.

Unless your current TV has physically imploded, wait. The new models get announced at CES in January, and the previous year's premium models hit their absolute lowest prices in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. That is your buying window.

The Verdict

The WIRED list for December 2025 proves that streaming services are still bringing the heat with content. But the content is only half the equation. We spend thousands of hours watching entertainment, yet we often skimp on the delivery mechanism.

Whether it’s a soundbar that lets you actually hear Daniel Craig’s accent, lighting that does justice to del Toro’s cinematography, or just a better bowl of popcorn for the family, these are the gifts that get used every single day.

Enjoy the movies, and turn off the motion smoothing on your TV settings. Happy holidays.