New Year's Countdown...of Horror: 2 - Rare Exports

I kind of messed up in my math.  I thought I needed to watch 2 films a day from the 26th - 31st to get a 10-point countdown.  Yeah, I get it now.  That's one day too many.  So #2 today, #1 tomorrow.

 2
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
2010, d. Jalmari Helander - tubi

The Story:

A (British?American?) team is drilling in the peaks of Finland's Korvatunturi mountains while two local boys look on.  Young Pietari believes the researchers are looking for the original Santa Claus, and very well may have found it.  Pietari researches the true origins of Santa and discovers that the folklore tells of a mythic figure who (has since been commercialized into Santa Clause) was a monstrous man-goat who would steal children and punish them for their misdeeds. Clearly uneased by this discovery, Pietari tries to warn his friends and father to no avail.

The community survives on their annual reindeer farming, but their herd has been slaughtered, they believe by wolves, let in through a hole in the fence that Pietari and Jusso cut to get a closer look at the drilling.  The town is facing financial ruin, but soon discover, as Pietari had warned, something far more deadly - the naked, bearded old "men", murderous servants of Santa Claus.

Why This?
It was recommended by a friend to watch as a Christmas horror movie. 

What's Good?
Rare Exports is a silly concept played straight, and that makes it rather delightful, even if so much of it doesn't make a lot of sense.
I grew up in a community with a large Finnish population, and one of my dearest friends is Finn, so I liked watching a movie spoken in Finnish and set in the country.  It was interesting both  the jibes at Russians as well as the palpable nervousness being a neighbour to Russia presents.  It's not a plot thread of the film, but I think just a natural part of life in Finland presented very casually here.
The mythos of the film is quite fun as well.

Not so good...
The big climax is a bit of a letdown, as the gigantic man-goat Santa (obviously germinating from the same origin point as the Krampus) is never actually let loose.  I would assume it became a budgetary thing, where the production team just couldn't make it look good (the film otherwise looks really nice) and shifted their story to something more practical.

I found the ending to be very uncomfortable, but it's a satire of sorts so it's kind of the punchline.

The bad thing:
The film sets up the man-goat Santa and creates a very palpable dread of his arrival.  Although he never does arrive, the naked, bearded old men were both hilarious and surprisingly creepy.  They're effectively his helpers, or elves (even though they're regular sized beings) and are quite durable, but violent, bitey, axe throwing creatures.  When all the children disappear and we find them in potato sacks at the feet of a 40-foot Santa encased in ice, it's pretty awesome. 

Franchise Potential: [Spoiler]

While they think they think they blew Santa up, it very well could be such a mystical being could survive the explosion.

Or the "mall Santa" training that they do with the captured "elves" could backfire and turn into a global catastrophe.

Did I like watching this?
Very much so, however I found the ending to be too self-congratulatory in fixing the problems that the town was having... by taking these "elves", training them to be kind to children, then selling them as authentic "Father Christmases" (per the original short film posted below) to places around the globe.

I don't really like seeing humans (even if they aren't really human, it's still uncomfortable) put into forced servitude, and beaten into submission to a certain way of behaving.  It's not very cool  I'm also not sure the business model of selling these "authentic Santas" for 85grand a piece. Who is buying them, and why?  They're basically vicious, mindless old men who don't seem to have any magical skills or anything (like, if they were magical crafters or something I could see their benefit).  The fact that they can be injured quite severly and keep going, really, they cannot die easily, makes me think a lot of these are going to be purchased for underground fighting rings.  Basically the film was trying to shoehorn in ideas from the original short film, and I don't think it quite fits.

It should be noted that this is a horror film, but its a light horror film.  It's not really for kids even though the main protagonist is a child. 



[Toasty's take - we agree]

Rare Exports Inc. (2003) from Woodpecker on Vimeo.