12 days of Christmas horror (Day 3) -Rare Exports (2010)

Most X-mas horrors go for the ‘psycho in a Santa suit’ scenario to yield maximum fright from a slash-happy festive gore-fest. Jalmari Helander’s Rare Exports turns a rare trick by remodelling the legend of the original Santa Clause with spectacular results.

Here, Santa is envisioned as an ‘old world’ terror, a kind of grotesque force of nature with a penchant for mutilating naughty children. Frozen years ago and entombed in the Korvantunturi mountains, Santa stays of screen for the entire film whilst the excavation team disappear and weird shit starts happening all over town. It’s a wise move from Helander, and steeps the film in mystery. We know something awful is coming we just don’t know what but we see enough eerie old sketches to prove that the “Coca Cola Santa” is most definitely bullshit.

The reason why the film feels so fresh is because its not explicitly a horror film or anything else. It’s a dark fairytale with a child and his father at its core. Young Peitari (Onni Tommila) knows things are far wrong before the adults and spends most of his time trying to figure out how to prove Santa is most definitely coming to town. Helander confronts us again and again with baffling, haunting visuals but where they all fit in is a continual head-scratcher. Footprints in the snow, disappearing kids, spats of kleptomania all over town, none of it adds up, but it doesn’t matter, its happening in the background whilst Peitari and his father get caught up in their own Christmas nightmare.

Helander’s visuals are gorgeous and only cement the film as an old-fashioned gothic fairy tale. If you’re looking for fields of butchered reindeer, it’s here. Hoards of naked, old, bearded, emaciated, Santa Helpers stampeding across the snowy hills? That’s here too. It all looks so good that the film never once breaks the banks of its own believability, it’s a world you can totally invest in because everything works and looks perfect. Even in the end when things get explosive and take on a larger scale, the film is an utter delight to behold. A true dark Christmas gem, as the tagline professes: ‘From the land that brought you the original Santa Clause’.