Shudder has picked up Red Snow, a Finnish horror comedy about a vampire who works Christmas Eve in a Santa suit. Variety broke the deal on Friday and reported a December 15 streaming date. The film has its world premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 20, which is to say tomorrow.
What It Actually Is
Johanna is 16, emo, and wants the vampire romance she has read about. Martti is 49, overweight, and gets into houses on Christmas Eve by dressing as Santa. The Finnish Film Foundation’s own synopsis says that instead of eternal romance, she finds “a horrific and bloody nightmare of aging masculinity, family trauma, and festive slaughter,” which is a fairly complete review of the premise.
Ilja Rautsi wrote and directed. It runs 92 minutes, it is in Finnish, and it opens in Finnish theaters on November 20 before Shudder gets it.
“Red Snow comes from my lifetime of love for all things horror, so I’m beyond thrilled to have the film be so widely available on Shudder,” Rautsi said in the announcement. “It’s a splattery Christmas present made by freaks for freaks. I couldn’t hope for a better home.”
Where Rautsi Came From
This is his first feature as a director, but not his first time through this festival circuit. He wrote Hatching, Hanna Bergholm’s 2022 Sundance premiere about a girl raising the thing that came out of an egg, which finished the year on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the best-reviewed horror films. He then co-wrote Bergholm’s Nightborn, which played in competition at the Berlinale in February and was up for the Golden Bear.
So the man behind the vampire Santa has spent two films building queasy, maternal, very controlled horror with the same collaborator, and has now gone off on his own to make a splatter comedy. Bufo produced, with Allfilm and Hobab co-producing and Charades handling international sales.
Finland Has Done Evil Santa Before
The obvious ancestor is Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, Jalmari Helander’s 2010 film in which Finland’s Santa is a horned thing excavated out of a mountain by a mining company. That one went mythological. Red Snow appears to go the other way and make him a middle-aged man in a rented suit, which is the more familiar kind of frightening.
There is also a title to untangle, because horror recycles them. Sean Nichols Lynch’s Red Snow (2021) is a Christmas vampire comedy about a woman whose vampire-romance fantasies collide with a real one, which is close enough to Rautsi’s setup to confuse a search bar. Marie Clements’ Red Snow (2019) is a Canadian war drama and has nothing to do with either.
No Trailer Yet
Nothing has been released beyond stills and a poster, and Shudder has not put out a teaser. Emily Gotto, the platform’s senior vice president of acquisitions and productions, called it “exactly the kind of wild, original genre filmmaking that Shudder audiences embrace.”
Festival reactions start landing this weekend. Until then, see what else is worth queuing on the best horror movies on Shudder right now, or work through our guide to Christmas horror movies while you wait for December.
