- Directed by Jalmari Helander
- Written by Jalmari Helander, Joust Helander, Petri Jokiranta
- Stars Onni Tommila, Jorma Tommila, Tommi Korpela
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywy4R8Hhi7g
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
This is just so ridiculous that it’s hard to find any faults with it. It’s the perfect Christmas horror film. Where does Santa Clause really come from? If you said “Finland,” you’d only be half right.
Synopsis
It’s an isolated mountain in Finland with a small village nearby.
The core samples from the dig have turned up something strange. It’s sawdust from 1300 meters down. They’ve continued to drill, and the manager gives new safety instructions, including things like “wash behind your ears.” The owner then finds something new in Sample #98. “My dream, since my earliest childhood,” is about to come true. “I can proudly say that we are standing on the sacred grave of the biggest burial mound in the world..” He instructs his men that they have 24 more hours to rob the grave. Two children overhear this and argue about Santa Claus. Credits Roll.
A child reads a book: “The Truth About Santa Claus.” Apparently, he’s really a monstrous, child-eating, demonic thing.
One day before Christmas, Rauno, the butcher, digs a deep hole and covers it; a trap for wolves. Young Pietari, his son, was the boy we saw reading the book, and he’s terrified of Santa. He’s found footprints under his window, like the ones Santa made in his book.
One of the neighbors is putting up an electric fence to enclose reindeer; there are predators in the area. The researchers up on the mountain have made the wildlife antsy with their explosions. Something has killed all the local reindeer, and wolves are the prime suspects. Rain and Piiparinen shoot open the gate and go inside to question the researchers, while Juuso and Pietari tag along.
The base is deserted. The men find a huge hole that goes way down. Finding no one there, they all go home for the night. Pietari staples his advent calendar shut; he doesn’t want to open the big prize. He explains to Juuso, “The real Santa was a bit different; the Coca Cola Santa is a fraud.” He shows him pictures from his book. He shows him a diagram he took from the mine up on the mountain. He thinks they dug up Santa Claus. Santa fell through the ice ages ago, and the people buried the whole block of ice under that mountain.
Pietari and his father talk over cookies. The mother has recently died, and they both miss her. Then we see what happened to the workers on the dig site.
It’s Christmas. Something triggered Rauno’s trap. There’s a body impaled on one of the spikes. Rain and Piiparinen take the body to the butcher’s work area and look more closely at him. It’s a very old man, but he has the mine foreman’s American passport on him. Pietari goes down in the hole and finds a bag of creepy dolls.
Rauno and Piiparinen start to cut up the body but finds that the old man is still alive. Rauno and Pietari go into town, and find that weird things have been happening. Thousands and thousands of potatoes are lying on the ground in the barn; someone stole all the sacks! Someone stole all the heaters and hair dryers in town. They think it was the Russians.
Pietari goes upstairs and finds another of those ugly dolls in Joust’s bed. Nobody wants to listen to his nonsense about evil Santa Claus. Pietari then goes home and calls all his friends, but none of them are home. Where’d they all go?
Meanwhile, Piiparinen wakes up the old man on the table with the smell of gingerbread cookies. The old man knocks out Piiparinen and bites his ear off. The others return and try to talk to the old man. Pietari comes in, and the old man finally starts to pay attention. Pietari says the old man was sent to take him like the other children. They tie the man up.
The radio in “Santa’s” pocket says they are landing in 30 minutes, and they want to know if “Is the package ready to fly?” Rauno wants to hold Santa hostage, so they put him in a cage and drive to the airport.
The helicopter from Subzero Inc. lands in front of them. The mine owner from earlier gets out and talks to the men. He wants to know where his men are. They ask for 85 thousand dollars for the cargo. He looks at the cargo and tells the men, “This is not Santa. This is one of Santa’s little helpers. Santa is going to find out who’s naughty or nice.” Then he’s killed by one of Santa’s elves. The men are surrounded by evil elves, of which the old man was one of.
They run inside one of the hangars and see a huge, frozen creature trapped in ice. It’s surrounded by ovens, heaters, and hair dryers. Also, many sacks full of children. As the elves try to break in the door, the ice starts to crack. Pietari notices the building has a skylight; he also notices many boxes of explosives.
Piiparinen makes it to the helicopter by distracting the elves with gingerbread. He takes off and rescues all the children by airlifting them out of the building. Rauno drills holes in Santa’s ice block and stuffs them full of dynamite. They also cut off his horns.
Meanwhile, dozens of naked Santa-Elves run through the snow in pursuit of the helicopter. Pietari suggests they lure them into the electric-fence corral and see what happens. Hundreds of naked Santas run into the corral.
Back at the airport, they detonate Santa. All the elves suddenly drop their weapons and look stunned. Their master has been destroyed. There are now one hundred ninety-eight “Santa Clauses.” They decide to sell them for $85,000 apiece. They’re all going to get quite rich on this.
We then get a shot of the men washing, cleaning, and training the Santa Clauses before the holiday for next year. They dress them up in Santa suits and sell them… in boxes marked “Rare Exports.” Now you know where mall Santas come from.
Commentary
This is just so ridiculous that it’s hard to find any faults with it. It’s the perfect Christmas horror film.
The acting is so-so, but the situations are just so over-the-top goofy that it’s hard to complain. There’s a little shoddy CGI, but again, it’s just so unique. It’s a must-see for horror fans in the holiday season.