finding out the truth about santa claus is a childhood rite of passage from faith and naïveté to a much healthier state of misanthropic skepticism. once we dispense with the lies our parents tell us, we unshackle ourselves from the narratives into which we were unwittingly born and can revel in a more solipsistic human condition. years later, we share self-congratulatory chuckles at christmas parties when we reveal to some n00b that the morbidly obese senior citizen in the red velour tracksuit sporting facial hair from movembers decades past is, in fact, the corporatised creation of coca-cola (nevermind what's mixed in this plastic cup of jack). eventually people we know have children of their own and we're forced to play along as they repeat the process, set their kids up for utter disillusionment with the world, and - worst of all - send us pictures of their offspring getting manhandled by ex-cons in cos-play.but what if santa was real? better: what if nordic mythology was real, and santa was actually the giant goat-headed devil-spawn of a mightily pissed-off odin who gets his kicks eviscerating the local fauna and boiling the towns-children alive? the standard holiday cinema classics would be replaced with films like rare exports, for one. and well they should! first the scandies saved vampires; now, they've saved christmas. and bless them, every one.
our brave young hero Pietari breaches the borderlands of his village one afternoon and discovers that the one true santa claus has been ice-boxed beneath the breath-taking korvatunturi mountains, and some ill-advised americans are trying to exhume him. Pietari digs out the mythology textbooks, realises santa is not to be fucked with, and alongside his stocking sets a bear-trap with care. one of the traps snares a catatonic old naked dude, some towns-children disappear, and Pietari devises a plan to save christmas, his village, and the world. throw in some pig slaughter, old man junk, and redemption of the father by the son, and you get one of the greatest stories ever told.
rare exports is kinda perfect: beautifully filmed, refreshingly original, and bloody heart-warming - a holiday classic for the whole family. no really, i want to watch this with my parents ... right after it's a wonderful life. it fills christmas with magic again.
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