Movie: Rare Exports
By: Maniac E
Date: December 18, 2013
Every now and then you come across movies that want to embrace the holiday spirit well this is one of them but with a twist! A folklore story about Santa with a darker lining around it. Will Rare Exports really give us what they promise? Let's find out.
Young Pietari lives with his stern reindeer-herding father Rauno in arctic Finland. On the eve of Christmas, an enormous excavation at a nearby mountain disturbs the locals and captures Pietari's curiosity. When Rauno's raindeer herd is mysteriously slain and the children in town go missing, Pietari realizes that the dig has unearthed the evil Santa Claus of local lore--who no one wants coming to town. Pietari's father rounds up a posse and captures the nightmarish creature in an attempt to sell him to the misguided leader sponsoring the dig. But Santa's dark elves will stop at nothing to free their fearless leader.
Rare Exports is one of those movies that tries do a lot of things in a minimum amount of time. It does hit some marks but misses most of them. It is a nice Christmas story and does really try and hold that Christmas spirit throughout the movie. The way the story evolves is done right and shows the creative nature of the film makers which really is what boosts this movie. With only a running time of 84 minutes it is a bit of a short walk in the park. But the way the movie has been set up it shouldn't be longer either. It is at some points a very funny movie only missing the mark a few times with things that weren't funny at all and would have just mattered for the people involved in the project. Rare Exports is a hit and miss kind of movie which shows when looking closer to details.
Where it just is missing the mark is the pace and story development and the weak ending just didn't help it. The concept of the whole movie is pretty neat but it fails to deliver what the concept truly wanted. There are a lot of moments in the movie that make you go like, I've seen this before. The way the movie ends should have been the way the movie should have been driven from the start. You never really get a binding with the main characters, they just don't go deep enough into character development . It all loses some steam towards the end, luckily the plot twist at the end gives it something you can remember it by. I did have had some high hopes for this movie but I must be one of the few that felt that the movie was a bit empty and wasn't as dark as it could have been.
All in all Rare Exports is a movie that you should see in the holiday season it shows creativeness and shows how you can twist fairytale stories into a more horror kind perspective. Although it is not without its problems showing in story development and character development. Normally I wouldn't take character development in the highest possible way, but now you need to have that to feel what the characters are going through and that is just missing the mark. There could have been more and it could have been a lot darker which I would have preferred but take it as it is: A holiday movie with a twist.
Rare Exports
Jalmari Helander
Finland
2010
Jorma Tommila, Peeter Jakobi, Onni Tommila
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