Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (R)
Christmas Specials Wiki; Dread Central; IMDb; official website; Oscilloscope; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; Hulu; iTunes; Shudder; Vudu; YouTube

Caution: spoilers.

This 2010 Finnish film is based on the 2003 short film Rare Exports Inc. (which I saw seven years before I saw this film in 2021). There's also a sequel short film from 2005, which I haven't seen. This movie was very well received by critics, but I'm afraid I only thought it was okay. And I think it barely qualifies as holiday horror, or a holiday movie at all. Mostly it's just weird.

It's set in Finland, and there's a mountain where a research team is drilling for samples. (The Finnish people in the movie call them Americans, but Wikipedia calls them British; I'm rather inclined to agree with the latter source, because of their accents.) Meanwhile, a few Finnish men and a couple of boys go out looking for reindeer to hunt, but find they've already been killed and left to rot, which means the men have lost a potential $85,000 in profits. They blame the research team, for having let in wolves through a hole in the fence that blocks off the mountain from the village, or whatever. But it was actually the boys who made the hole. However, it actually is the research team who are to blame, because it wasn't wolves that killed the reindeer. It was what the team was drilling for that killed them. And that thing is Santa Claus.

Well, we eventually learn it wasn't actually Santa. It was his helpers, who look human, but are more like wild animals. (And they're naked.) A man named Rauno accidentally catches one in a pit he had dug to illegally catch wolves. At first he thinks it's a member of the research team, and he appears to be dead, but later turns out to be alive. And Rauno's 10-year-old son, Pietari, believes it's Santa Claus. Rauno and two of his friends get in touch with the head of the research team, Riley, and arrange a meeting to sell Santa for the money they'd lost on the reindeer, but Riley is the one who first tells them that what they've caught is only one of Santa's helpers. Soon more of them show up, and converge on a warehouse where all the local children (except Pietari) have been captured and are being kept in sacks. Also in the warehouse is the real Santa Claus, a giant creature that is frozen in ice, which his helpers want to free with stolen radiators. Yeah. But Pietari comes up with a plan to stop them, and that's when I feel that the movie really starts to get interesting, and amusing. Unfortunately, it's near the end of the film, and I found most of what came before that kind of boring.

Anyway, the whole movie turns out to be a prequel to the original short film, so I'm not sure which thing you'd rather watch first. And I don't know what else to tell you. I really wanted to like the movie more than I did, and I agree with all the things that the critics praise about it... I just can't manage to feel those things. It's definitely a good movie, though. Especially the last 20 minutes or so. And I'm really glad I've finally seen it.