Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010, R)

This Finnish film starts with an [American?] excavation crew trying to unearth "the original Santa Claus" from beneath a mountain just across the Russian border (from Finland).  The main character is a little boy named Pietari whose father -and many of the other nearby families- are reindeer herders.  Pietari looks up the old tales in some books and finds out that the original Santa is far more fearsome than the Coca-Cola mascot we know today, more like Krampus (link to Wikipedia article).  Northern European films that I've seen have had a really solid ratio of quality: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Dead Snow, Let The Right One In... there's not a bad or mediocre movie in the bunch!  However I've had an unfortunately low ratio of movies that I've liked out of films that were written and directed by the same person.  Fortunately the Northern quality won out in this case.


  This is a horror movie with a high production value.  Pietari is a pretty good-natured kid whose only friend that we get so see is a kind of  meaner older kid, most of the adults have some jerk-streaks in them too, but they're the good-guys in the story.  The conflict in the plot is that Santa wants to take (and probably eat) the children in the town.  Eventually Pietari's dad finds the frail but resilient form of an old white-bearded man, and I was surprised how creepy the guy could look when he wasn't moving very much.  The horror elements were well placed: it built tension without revealing too early, and it was paced to keep us going the whole time without relying on jump-scares for the last hour as many horror films will.  Pietari steps up near the end and gets to play the hero (felt kind of like The Goonies if there was only one Goonie).  The movie could have ended at one point, but the writer decided to give it one extra scene, which still fits but has a slightly different tone, that makes for a nice payoff for the viewer.  Don't turn off the film until you see the credits roll.

It's hard to place the target audience age.  The main character is a young child and his antagonist is a supernatural being, and that normally lends itself to a younger audience... but it does have moments of nasty gore, intended and/or expressed violence and more than one creepy naked elf (not like sexual predator creepy, more like "what is that demented-looking guy doing standing naked in the snow?" kind of creepy)... which I still wouldn't necessarily point children toward.  For me, it's easily a 4.5 stars (I'm stingy with my 5's, and there were other films I have liked more, but I still really liked this one).  If you liked The Goonies and Dead Snow, then I imagine you'll love this movie.  If you want to avoid the non-children-oriented stuff I mentioned a moment ago, or if you hate subtitles... you've been warned.