Vampire Santa Hunts a Finnish Family in Ilja Rautsi's 'Red Snow'

A vampire in a Santa suit devours entire families in "Red Snow," the horror-comedy by Finnish director Ilja Rautsi that sales agent Charades has brought to the market after stops at Fantastic Fest and Sitges. The film now heads to the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and has screened at the AFM.

The premise is deliberately outrageous. Teenage Johanna dreams of a glittering Twilight-style vampire prince. Instead she gets Martti: a balding, beer-bellied 49-year-old bloodsucker who puts on a Santa suit to gain entry to homes. Johanna soon finds herself trapped in what Rautsi describes as a nightmare of ageing masculine toxicity, family trauma and festive slaughter.

Bufo, Allfilm and Hobab produced the film. Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Anni Iikkanen, Tommi Korpela, Kari Hietalahti and Marja-Liisa Nguyen star.

Why mix vampires with Santa Claus?

Rautsi admitted the combination — "and the sexual undertones that come with it" — has surprised some viewers. He defended the film's tone in an interview.

"It can be disturbing to people, but it's not a disturbing film. It's set in this absurd, outrageous world that hopefully allows me to get away with it. That's the part of its charm: the grotesque and all the twists and turns in the story," he said.

"It's a gruesome Christmas present."

The director said grounding the film in recognizable emotion mattered to him. "These are heightened characters, but there are also some glimmers of what they are actually going through. We don't necessarily have to root for them all the time, but we're along for the ride — despite all the madness."

The Christmas setting functions as pressure, not decoration. "For me, this juicy Christmas setting acts as a boiling kettle. We've all been there. We know the feeling of spending Christmas with family when you're supposed to be jolly but it's actually miserable," he laughed.

He named an influence: "You can see this in all of Shane Black's films that are set at Christmas but not about Christmas. I think they have affected me, too."

What does this change for Rautsi?

The film arrives with the director's genre credentials already established. Rautsi made the shorts "Helsinki Mansplaining Massacre" and "The Night of the Living Dicks," and wrote "Nightborn" and "Hatching." "Red Snow" extends that run into features with international sales attached.

He framed horror as personal comfort rather than shock tactic. "I'm a nervous person. A good horror film is my comfort zone, though, because it validates the internal life of someone who's afraid. Fear is such a taboo subject — people don't talk about it. But then we go and see a horror film, and we celebrate the fact that it's O.K. to be afraid. It can be fun to experience it in a safe setting," he said.

Despite the wild premise, Rautsi called the film a portrait of how he perceives life — scary and funny at once.

"I'm constantly laughing about all the things I'm afraid of. The goal of the film was to express how I experience things. You can be going through something ridiculous and then notice something beautiful about the whole situation. Life can be so many things, all at once, within the space of five seconds," he said.

With Charades handling sales and a Tallinn Black Nights premiere ahead, "Red Snow" positions itself as this season's counter-programming: a Christmas film where the jolly man in red has fangs.