Rare Exports (2010)

Pietari and his friend Juuso sneak across the border from Finland to Russia to spy on an excavation project. Under the ruse of drilling, the crew is trying to find a rumored burial chamber in the mountain.  But when they reach it, they find there is something alive in there.

When Pietari and Juuso's fathers go on their annual reindeer hunt, they find the herd have been killed, which they blame on wolves displaced by the blasting.  But Pietari suspects something else is going on. He has seen footprints in the snow outside his window and now there's a bloody human footprint under a dead reindeer carcass.

Pietari has been reading up on Scandinavian folk tales which say  that Santa Claus is actually a scary guy.  So he is suspicious when strange things start to happen in town.  Children are disappearing and creepy dolls are left in their beds.  All the radiators in town are stolen.  Then Pietari's father finds a man in his wolf pit who appears to be dead. But he seems to come to life whenever he smells gingerbread or children are around. Never has a frail old man been so menacing.

I really liked this movie.  It has a creepy atmosphere, (so if you're looking for gore, this is not the film for you.)  The kid who plays Pietari goes a great job. His character figures out what is going on long before the adults, and of course the adults do not believe him.  There is some dark humor and the film is well shot, which is a nice change from a lot of the crap films I sit through.  I saw this last year with some friends and then watched it this year with others, and it's been unanimous - everyone really liked it.

Here's the trailer if you're curious.  It couldn't be smaller than this size as you need to be able to see the subtitles.