Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) is a Finnish holiday horror you can watch online on iFILM. Jalmari Helander's debut feature takes the cozy legend of a kindly old gift-giver and digs up something far nastier.

Deep in the mountains of Lapland, a drilling crew cracks open an ancient burial mound and hauls to the surface what was buried there for very good reason. Young Pietari, son of a local reindeer herder, is the only one who grasps what has been let loose. This is no jolly grandfather with a sack of presents — it is a feral creature out of old pre-Christian lore. As children and whole reindeer herds start disappearing, father and son are left to handle the threat themselves, rifles in hand.

Helander mines the folklore of the original, terrifying Joulupukki and plays it straight, with frozen northern landscapes and a bone-dry streak of humor. It is neither a spoof nor a kids' matinee but a grim winter fairy tale for adults, grown out of the director's earlier short films. The perfect antidote to saccharine holiday movies. Stream Rare Exports (2010) online on iFILM.