Ten Days of Terror!: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Film: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

I think the connection between Christmas and horror is about subversion of expectations. Christmas tends to be thought of as more of a happy holiday—we get together with family and friends, we give gifts, and we eat lots of food. The reality, of course, is that Christmas and the holidays are a difficult time of year for a lot of people. But there’s a sense of innocence, even with the reality that suicides increase during the holidays. So, something evil happening feels right in a lot of ways, both in terms of being shocking from what we expect, and also because it kind of is what we expect. And that’s going to bring us to Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (or, just Rare Exports if you prefer).

As the film starts, we find ourselves in the Lapland part of Finland. An American/British research team is drilling at the top of a large mountain, which is assumed to be an ancient burial mound. All of this is observed by Juuso (Ilmari Järvenpää) and Pietari (Onni Tommila). Pietari is convinced that Santa Claus is real and punishes bad children, something that Juuso finds ridiculous. All of this happens just as the company starts using explosives to excavate the mound.

Economic disaster hits the area when it is discovered that the expected reindeer herd has been slaughtered. Everyone initially thinks they were killed by wolves, but Pietari finds what looks like a human footprint. The locals plan to demand reparations from the company they now hold responsible for the deaths of the reindeer herd. Things change again when the wolf trap set by Pietari’s father Rauno (Jorma Tommila) catches a man. Initially, everyone thinks the old man is dead, but he is not. It is also revealed that potato sacks, heaters and a hair dryer have all vanished from the houses of locals. Pietari looks to tell Juuso the news, but finds that he has been replaced by a crude effigy.

What does all of this mean? It means that there actually is something to the Santa Claus story, and that it’s potentially a lot darker than those of us in the West, who have grown up with “A Visit from St. Nicholas” and the Coca-Cola version of Santa Claus think. This is a Santa Claus who is much closer to a Grimm’s fairy tale than something sanitized for children. This is a Santa Claus much more prone to punishment than reward.

There’s a lovely moment in the film where we realize what has been found under the mound and what has been dug out. And then there is a second realization that really makes the entirety of Rare Exports work as well as it does. I’m not going to spoil that here, but if you’ve seen the movie, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Rare Exports does a lot of things really well. What it does far better than most movies of this type is that it takes Pietari completely seriously. This is a kid who is just about the age where belief in Santa Claus starts to get embarrassing. This is hammered home with the opening scene where Juuso is brutal in his scorn for Pietari still believing. Pietari is genuinely a good kid—when the dead reindeer are discovered, he is convinced that he and Juuso are responsible for creating a break in the fence surrounding the facility digging out the mound. It could, in fact, be argued pretty easily that Juuso is captured and Pietari is not because of their reactions to their actions regarding the opening in the fence.

The thing I genuinely like the most is that Rare Exports tells a really fun story really well. It’s clear pretty quickly where this story is going to go, at least in the broad strokes, and it’s still a lot of fun at every turn. It’s definitely a horror movie, or at least horror-adjacent, but it’s also never really that scary. If you’ve got kids just about ready for R-rated horror, this is a good choice. This is an R-rated film, but just for language and nudity (and the nudity is Santa Claus). It’s not gory and the violence is pretty mild. This goes more for mildly upsetting or disturbing without being nightmare fuel, and for the most part, it hits squarely.

Some people might be disappointed by the ending, but I think it works. The people who won’t like the way this ends are honestly the sort of people who probably wouldn’t like Rare Exports in the first place. If you haven’t seen it, it makes a good choice for regular December rotations.

Why to watch Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale: This is a very different version of Santa Claus.
Why not to watch: The ending might not work for some people.