What if you discovered the REAL secret behind Santa Claus? In the horror comedy movie, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, three men and one little boy find out the truth.
The movie opens with a research team drilling for samples in the Finnish region of Lapland. Two local boys are watching them set off explosives, when one boy, Pietari, tells the other that Santa is real and he likes to torture bad children.
Meanwhile, local reindeer hunters are finding hundreds of reindeer carcasses savaged by wolves (or so they think). And why have so many of the town’s children gone missing? They just know something is up, and it must have to do with the drilling. When they get drillsite, they find a pit but no one from the research team.
Christmas Eve morning, Pietari’s father, Rauno, finds a skinny, naked old man in one of his wolf traps. Thinking the man is dead, he brings him to his barn, but he’s not dead, and he just might be Santa. This Santa is not jolly, he doesn’t chuckle “ho ho ho,” and there’s no red suit. This is not a nice Santa. There are no gifts.
Rauno and his friends still believe this is all tied to the research team. They figure that maybe, just maybe, the company in charge will pay good money for this “Santa.” After all, they really need the money, now that all of their reindeer are dead.
Meanwhile, in a hangar, something is frozen in a block of ice. Something big, something with horns… and what is it with all the hair dryers disappearing? Well, you’re going to find out!
Rare Exports has a lot of dark humor, great action sequences, thrills and, of course, some really creepy horror. The ending is a real kicker too! The film won several awards in Finland and in Europe and was nominated for a Saturn Award by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.
So if you need a break from all the Hallmark holiday movies and prefer some scares with your holiday cookies, check out Rare Exports or one of these films below.
Holiday Horror Film Recommendations
The Mean One — A Grinch horror parody
Silent Night (2012)
Jack Frost (1997) — In this movie, Jack Frost is a killer snowman
Jack Frost (2022) — In this movie, Jack Frost is a killer demon
Binge Box Holiday Horror Nights — Includes: Black Christmas, Krampus, The Lodge, Silent Night and A Christmas Horror Story