Metacritic reviews

The focus of this bizarre Finnish fairy tale - as black as anything the Brothers Grimm could have dreamed up - is a sinister old codger who chews off ears and whose demon minion kidnaps innocent children. Ho ho no!

A fiendishly entertaining Christmas yarn rooted in Northern European legend and lore, complete with a not-so-jolly old St. Nick informed more by the Brothers Grimm than Norman Rockwell.

If you're a bah-humbug type looking for an alternative to Santa Claus: The Movie or Miracle On 34th Street, this could be a holiday perennial. May be too strange for normal people, but weird kids will love it.

What unfolds is a dark comic thriller and action-hero send-up, a strange alloy of daredevil helicopter maneuvers and night of the living elves. Captured in atmospheric widescreen camerawork, the end-of-the-world frozen landscape (actually Norway) is spectacular and spooky.

Slight but fun.

It's likely the best anti-Christmas Christmas movie since "Bad Santa."

This oddball tale of life on a snowy mountainside is consistently upbeat and surprising, with action intensity that stays sturdily at "Goonies" level.

Much of Rare Exports is seen through the eyes of its preteen protagonist, which explains some of the story's minor omissions (who, exactly, hired this nefarious multinational mining outfit and why exactly?).

It isn't recommended for impressionable children, who might well experience nightmares. But for grown-ups looking for an alternative to the annual onslaught of ho-ho-ho Christmas tales, the visually pleasing oddity is just the thing, even if it does slow down in its middle portion before picking up again.

Some moments are so deliciously shivery-our heroes' breath condensing in the air like in John Carpenter's "The Thing"-that you wish the film were naughtier and less nice.