Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Synopsis: When a strange millionaire (Jonathan Hutchings) hires a bunch of men to dig inside a mountain, they don’t know what they’re looking for. But Pietari (Onni Tommila) a young boy from the nearby village has a good idea. He thinks they’ve found where Santa Claus was trapped and buried. And if they dig him up, he’s going to find out who was naughty or nice…

“The Citizen Kane of Evil Santa movies!” proclaims the poster. And given the limited scope of the statement, it’s pretty accurate. Conflating Krampus, a German mythical counterpoint to St Nicholas, with our modern notion of Santa, the filmmakers have created a ripping pre-Christian influenced version of the Yuletide story. When you say “Evil Santa Movie”, you kind of expect a gruesome horror movie but Rare Exports, whilst being eerie and blackly funny, is nothing of the sort. Instead, it actually made me think of children’s films from the '80s like The Neverending Story that had a bit of darkness in them, as well as a lot of fun and light. I mention that because despite the marketing I’ve seen so far, I reckon this is a kids’ film. Sadly, it’s rated M, rather than PG. Told from the perspective of a child, tracking his movement from believing in Santa Claus to having to find a way to destroy him before he wreaks havoc on the world, youngsters would lap it up. Though I guess it does feature a horde of naked old men chasing after a boy, an attempt at cutting up a body and a guy getting a pick-axe through the brainpan, so maybe the not-so-young…

Rare Exports is a wonderful film, pitch-perfect for much of the tale. The growing sense of unease is expertly handled, with plenty of dry Northern European humour to spare. Pietari’s obsession has some great gags as he dons his hockey armour expecting Santa to come and tapes cardboard across his backside to protect against being spanked with a birch. What he does to the expectant fireplace is classic. But for all the wonderful weirdness, Helander’s film does stumble slightly towards the end. Stumble maybe isn’t the right word - what we get is pretty great and it ends very satisfyingly, but I expected, and was left wanting, even more. It’s weird - you’ll laugh, you’ll wince and then you’ll laugh some more. But nevertheless, there’s something that’s missing. Maybe it needed a bigger moment in there, I’m not sure. But don’t let that stop you from seeing it, because whilst you’ll probably feel the absence too, you’ll still be laughing your way through the best Evil Santa movie yet made

Limited company to be sure, but Rare Exports is a ripper little film and the ending is one of the strangest and funniest things you’ll see this holiday season.

 

 

Want more about this film?

    

Want something different?