Holiday movie fare being typically comprised of the intellectual equivalent of a DIY trepanning kit, most of us would rather spike the eggnog with Drano than endure ten minutes in a movie theater having our brains liquify and drip out our noses during yet another abysmally insulting holiday film. Some have visions of sugarplums dancing; others have fantasies of Fokkers roasting on an open fire. But Hollywood does not get smarter, and so it goes.
This recurring pain is why I’m giddy as an evil schoolgirl to see Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010). This a Finnish holiday film that looks to be a well done, extremely dark modern day holiday tale about the real legend of Santa. This ain’t no Bad Santa bullshit with a midget thrown in for low-IQ clownish laughs. This is motherfucking Christmas horror, kids.
In it, a millionaire finances an excavation along the Finland-Russia border where the local people froze and deep-sixed the real Santa about a hundred years ago. Unlike the dopey, dim bulbs of contemporary Santa-lore, it turns out that Santa was a monstrous hybrid of animal and man whose primary joys came from the consumption of human flesh. Especially tasty little kids. Santa’s elves were not cute but they were clever, using their sacks not for presents but for savagely abducting human morsels to bring back for their cannibal master. A local schoolboy watches the excavation unfold into a nightmare, he being the only character who sees the truth firsthand.
I have to see this film; it was slated for domestic release this weekend but I can only find it showing in one theater in New York so far. I’ll update this post when I get show times.
Update: Eve from SFAppeal sent me info saying that Rare Exports opens December 17, 2010 (in the Bay Area). Yay!