Rare Exports - a Christmas Classic!
Happy Holidays once again, Horror Bound fans! For my last piece of the season, and probably the year, I decided to watch for the first time, and review, 2010’s Rare Exports, a film coming to us from Finland and set during Christmastime in the present day. This film has kind of been calling out to me this year for a few reasons. First, a co-worker of mine who puts in some volunteer time at the local art house theater asked me if I had ever seen it because the theater was going to be screening it for their annual Christmas party this year. Then, another co-worker of mine who had taken the entire month of November off to welcome the birth of their new baby (congrats again, Charles and Isabella ;), had stayed up one night getting his newborn son to sleep and came across it on Hulu. After he had watched it, he told me how great it was and how he thought of me the whole time (still don’t know why that is) and how he had wished he wrote it (he’s the co-instructor for the screenwriting class we teach). Anyway, after that, I have to admit my curiosity was officially piqued.
Scandinavia’s been having a pretty good go at it over the last decade or so with films like the vampire romance of Let the Right One In, the Nazi zombies of Dead Snow, the found footage thriller of Trollhunter, not to mention Shudder’s Swedish import series Jordskott. I have no bias when it comes to film, especially genre film, I’ll watch anything, subtitles or not, I don’t care. So it didn’t take a lot of convincing for me to dive into this, especially given the time of year and my interest in always uncovering new holiday themed classics.
I’ll admit, I had no clue as to the significance of this film for the Finnish people or their culture, so I was a little confused during the opening scenes. But that only led me to do some research afterwards, which you know I love doing so that I can interject my writing with some history for you as well. So you’ll need to know a few things going in if you really want to enjoy Rare Exports or Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale as it also known by.
If you didn’t know this already, Christmas actually spun off from a pagan holiday that dates back to the middle ages. It was a celebration of the arrival of the season, as most ancient holidays were, kind of like the winter solstice we celebrate here in North America on December 21, except theirs is in January. Here’s the cool part: during this feast, men would don big fur coats and wood masks adorned with horns, then knock on the doors of the townsfolk to demand gifts and treats. If their demands weren’t met, they would steal away the children.
Oh, those kooky Vikings. It wasn’t until after the arrival of Christianity to Scandinavia, that the demands for gifts turned into the giving of gifts, and the threat to children turned into the rewarding of children who had been good all year. The scary men in fur coats and masks were also replaced with the jolly ‘ol St. Nicholas, once his charitable nature had reached the northern lands in the mid 1800’s, and the new Santa imagery was born, morphing into some strange horned man creature. Additionally, in the early 20th century, a Finnish radio DJ had declared the exact location of Santa’s workshop to be in the northeastern fell of Korvatunturi, right on the Finnish/Russian border. Okay, so with the brief Finnish holiday history lesson over, now you are completely ready to enjoy this fine film.
Alrighty, so Rare Exports is based off a short film seven years prior entitled Rare Exports Inc., brought to us by the Helander brothers. Older brother, Jalmari, returns to both write and direct the feature length adaptation. Although I’ve seen it around the interwebs described as a dark comedy, there wasn’t really much I found funny about it, but the idea and concept are equal parts lighthearted yet creepy. It’s a unique film that, in my opinion, is as much a family film as it is a horror film. But don’t fret, even with its “R” rating, there’s no real bloody or gory violence. In fact, aside from male frontal nudity, I don’t see why it’s garnered that rating at all. My point being, if you were so inclined to sit down by the fire and cuddle with your little ones on the couch this holiday season to enjoy this tale, I think it’d be safe (so long as you can explain all the dangling parts hanging from the naked old men running around in the finale).
The story starts innocently enough as we find our young hero, Pietari (Onni Tommila), out in the mountains eavesdropping on the conversations between an excavation company executive and his local labor for hire regarding a find they have uncovered deep within the mountain. He announces to the workers that they have stumbled upon the greatest find of the modern era and that they now have just 23 days to dig it up (the opening scene takes place on December 1st). Knowing the legend of the seasonally famous locale, Pietari immediately believes the excavation team has discovered the tomb of Santa Claus. But soon after he does his own research on the mythology and lore of the jolly man, he uncovers the grisly truth surrounding the origins of the icon. And so, he fights to stay awake night after night in order to stave off an attack by the bearded one himself, believing that the excavation team is about to unleash all manner of evil upon the world.
Soon enough, strange occurrences begin to take place in the small isolated hunting village in which Pietari inhabits with his widowed father (played by real life father to Pietari actor, Jorma Tommila) and a small group of close friends. Traps are sprung; bare footprints are found in the snow, all culminating in the mass slaughter of the town’s sole livelihood: their entire stock of reindeer. Unable to believe the inane claims of their children, the elder men turn to blaming the neighboring Russians and their workforce of excavators for the mass killings and demand to be reimbursed for the loss. But once they’ve stormed the excavation site, there is not a single worker to be found, and only a very deep and dark hole is left blown open in the mountain. Once the men return to town, they stumble across a sprung trap that holds within it a frail, naked, and bearded old man. They bind him and stash him in the slaughterhouse until they can figure out why he’s there.
Christmas morning comes and the young Pietari cannot find hide nor hair of any of his friends. He calls around to their parents and they all claim the children have been missing since morning. Meanwhile, the men finding that none of this strangeness started happening until the arrival of the old man, begin to question him. Pietari finally convinces the dads that they have indeed caught the recently freed Santa Claus and that he alone is responsible for the disappearance of the town’s children. They then decide that if the excavation company wants the one and only authentic St. Nick back, then they can ransom him off to recoup all their reindeer losses and recover their kidnapped children.
There’s a great twist that comes next once they set up the meet with the excavation executive and he informs the group that they haven’t captured Santa Claus, but instead have only captured one of his elves. This revelation is immediately followed by one of the creepiest shots in the film when all of the sudden, the gathered men find that they are being slowly surrounded by dozens of skinny, old, naked, bearded men, all of whom are wielding very sharp instruments of death. Thus starts the big finale action piece where they now have to divert the helpers (read: elves) via a helicopter carrying the kidnapped children so that two of the dads can stay behind and blow the real Santa sky high before the block of ice he’s contained in melts and frees him. It’s all very entertaining and of course gets accomplished without a hitch or sole casualty.
In the end, we’re treated to a very cute and gratifying conclusion as we come to find that the towns people have started a Santa training school in the aftermath of the chaos and with the now master-less elves having no one left to serve. So once each elf has graduated from the training, they’re boxed and shipped off all over the world as authentic Santa Claus from the birthplace of Santa himself. Thus the title of the film: Rare Exports.
Like I said, this a pretty good family film for the holidays, once you get past all the horrifying depictions of the Jolly ‘ol fat man. Sure there’s some plot holes, like we never find out why the excavation company wanted to find the Santa to begin with, which is kind of the kick starter to the whole film or what the elves were doing all this time. But if you can get past all that and just sit down for an entertaining movie, then you’ll be pleased. The production itself is pretty solid. Breathtaking vistas and believable set design provide us with plenty to glance over and the surprisingly polished visual effects won’t give you anything to bitch about later.
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