Rare Exports (2010)

(In French, On Cable TV, December 2020) The idea of a horror film in which Santa isn’t a kindly friend to all isn’t exactly original these days, but it’s given an energetic spin in Finnish writer-director Jalmari Helander’s Rare Exports. The Santa mythology is taken for a spin when a vast and ancient burial chamber is discovered inside one of Finland’s mountains – and a violent creature escapes. Santa is scary here, and his elves aren’t much better. Equal parts action, fantasy, horror and plain old holiday comedy, Rare Exports is a high-concept, low-brow mainstream crowd-pleaser… at least in concept. The material isn’t as much “psycho Santa with an axe” (as is often the case when horror meets Christmas) but “Krampus by another name.” Visually, it’s surprisingly slick: good special effects combined with Finnish shooting locations mean that we get a cold wintry atmosphere made for chills, and some very sharp cinematography. Narratively, the film struggles a bit more: The script doesn’t get to the meat of its premise for a long time, and there’s a sense that the film has more ideas than the means required to execute them. The ending doesn’t quite tie things up enough (the final joke is based on a previous short film by the writer-director, which doesn’t necessarily fit with the rest) and the pacing of the entire film is inconsistent. Nonetheless, there’s some interesting material here, and given Rare Exports’ lack of holiday cheer it can play pretty well at any time other than the weeks leading up to December 25.