Five-Legged Iguana

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2011
Candidate # 35

RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE
(August 2010)


This one’s for everyone out there who either loves everything about Christmas and doesn’t really care (or is ignorant) about its pagan origins, or everyone who just loathes the “Coca Cola Santa” and the rabid, desperate commercialism that now cloaks all things “Christmas,” regardless of where the holiday springs from.
Come to think of it, Rare Exports may be for everyone else in-between too. Written and directed by Jalmari Helander (based on an original idea by the Helander brothers), Rare Exports finds some of its roots in those ‘80’s Amblin pictures where the only person who seems to know exactly what’s going on is a kid (here, played by Onni Tommila), who has to get everyone else to believe him: that Santa Claus is real, and he’s not at all the fat, jolly fellow everyone’s come to think he is…

Parting shot: An AJ Annila is given some thanks in the film’s end titles crawl; I’m assuming this is Antti-Jussi Annila, director of past ¡Qué Horror! title, Sauna.

(Rare Exports OS courtesy of impawards.com.)