Gas up the snowmobiles, staple your Advent calendar shut, grab the gingerbread cookies and please study the safety instructions! We're heading to Finland.
This week on Midnight Cinema, Art and Erik travel deep into the frozen wilderness to unwrap one of the most wickedly original Christmas movies ever made: Jalmari Helander's Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale.
Forget everything you think you know about Santa Claus. This isn't a jolly old man squeezing down chimneys — this is ancient folklore, buried alive beneath the Arctic ice, waiting to be unearthed by corporate greed, dynamite, and very bad decisions. Naughty lists are enforced. Elves are feral old men. And Christmas cheer comes with a body count. Even the reindeer aren't safe.
Set in a remote Finnish village near the mythical Korvatunturi mountains, Rare Exports blends dark comedy, creature-feature thrills, and icy suspense into a holiday horror experience unlike anything else. It's equal parts mythological nightmare, pitch-black satire, and winter survival film. And somehow still finds room for warmth, wonder, and a surprisingly heartfelt coming-of-age story.
In this episode, we dig into:
Santa Claus as ancient monster, capitalist commodity, and cultural myth
Why Rare Exports works as horror, comedy, and Christmas movie
The film's immaculate tone: deadpan humor, dread, and escalating chaos
Does this film have a place as a modern holiday cult classic
So zip up your parka, mind your manners, and keep your children close. Because in Rare Exports, Santa is watching and his elves are everywhere!
Merry Christmas from Midnight Cinema! And remember: behave!
And if you make it through the long Finnish night without being dragged into the tundra by feral elves, audited by an ancient Santa, or sealed in a crate marked "Rare Exports," come hang with us for more late-night deep dives into cult classics, holiday oddities, and all the wonderfully unhinged cinema we adore at midnightcinemapod.com
Be sure to follow and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! We promise, there's no Arctic survival gear required.
And come hang with us on Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube for clips, chaos, behind-the-scenes shenanigans, and the occasional message quietly slipped under the door by someone who knows whether you've been naughty or nice.
