Geekscape Reviews ‘Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale!’

It’s hard living in Los Angeles at Christmas. Every other Christmas carol you hear is just another lie about the weather. (Yes, of course I’d let it snow, but it’s not up to me is it?) But the older you get, and the more learned you get, the more all the other Christmas carols start to piss you right off. Particularly all the ones about Santa Claus. It’s amazing how an Eastern European legend about a child-killing monster has become the symbol of all that is innocent and Christian and on sale for a low-low price.

Finnish director Jalmari Helander thinks that’s pretty amazing too, if his new film Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is any indication. In theaters now, this beautiful amalgam of yuletide fantasy and borderline Lovecraftian horror is the best surprise of the holiday season, and the best Christmas movie of its kind since Tim Burton’s classic Nightmare Before it. A rich industrialist believes he has made a significant archaeological find: an entire mountain in Finland is nothing but a tomb for a horrible monster God named “Santa Claus.” While his men unearth the crypt – careful to follow safety guidelines like washing behind their ears and minding their language – a young boy (Onni Tommila) learns the truth behind every childhood Christmas story. Santa, the sinister God of judgment, is coming… and you’d better watch out.

Helander deserves credit for making a horror movie about a killer Santa Claus without resorting to cheap gags (although the language barrier might be a factor). Rare Exports manages to take an exploitative concept mined in such films as Silent Night, Deadly Night and Santa’s Slay, take it seriously, and most importantly get away with it. Rarely gory and only somewhat scary, Rare Exports plays instead as a modern movie fairy tale: the kind in which kids believe in magic and must save their parents, and usually the world, using only the power of their imaginations. As a spiritual successor to Monster Squad, Helander’s film is pitch-perfect. This isn’t a good gimmick movie. It’s a very, very good movie. And Mika Orasmaa’s exquisite cinematography, so lush and epic it warrants comparison to The Lord of the Rings, is a huge factor.

But really, everyone in Rare Exports has put together some amazing work. It’s a simple film but carries surprising depth of character. It’s a pretty film about ugly monsters. It’s a splendid story that’s both unexpected and wholly familiar. It’s Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, and it’s the best Christmas movie in a very, very long time. Just don’t take your kids. It’ll fuck ‘em right up.