Review of Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) by James S — 09 Jan 2013

A rare mis-fire from our friends to the North, this is one Scandinavian offering that fails to hit the mark. In a movie landscape that has been seemingly obsessed with fairytale characters and putting a new spin on them, it's a bit of a surprise that this is the only one to have taken on the Father Christmas mythology. It's a just a shame that the likely reaction it will illicit is that of a shoulder shrug.

Somewhere in Finland a greedy Euro excavator has found Santa Claus buried under a mountain and encased in a block of ice. This isn't the Coca Cola Santa though but a much nastier version who devours naughty people. The town's folk are up in arms after their reindeer crop is slaughtered while a young buy tries to convince everyone that digging up Santa could be very bad news indeed.

There are some nice touches of horror movie style humour along the way. The excavator gives out a list of rules to his staff which includes things like no swearing. The boy places a man trap inside the chimney to halt Santa on his descent and there is an odd tense moment and a twist which seems clever at the time but unfortunately goes nowhere.

The real problem with Rare Exports is that at no point does it make us care about its characters. The young boy is simperingly annoying and goes from wuss to action hero in the blink of an eye. We know his mother died years ago but aside from that there is nothing imparted to make us root for this child.

I appreciate that there was a budget to consider too but in dark fantasy horrors we expect to have our patience rewarded with a shot of the big evil that's been lurking throughout the film but Rare Exports doesn't even do that.

Aside from providing a logo which will undoubtedly make it on to one of those hip, movie referential t-shirts that you find all over the internet, Rare Exports gives it's audience nothing and squanders a great idea. Given 15 to 20 more minutes run time and a bit of character build up this could have been decent.