Get a first look at Red Snow, Ilja Rautsi’s vampire Santa horror

Instead of the swoony vampire she’s been dreaming about, teenage Johanna comes face to face with Martti — a 49-year-old, balding, beer-bellied bloodsucker who slips into a Santa suit to get invited inside and then eats entire families. That’s the nasty, very funny hook of Red Snow, writer-director Ilja Rautsi’s holiday horror- comedy that turns cozy Christmas rituals into a buffet for a very wrong kind of Kris Kringle.

Rautsi leans into the holiday’s messier side — forced cheer, awkward reunions, old grudges — and uses vampire mythology to poke at the parts of family Christmas we’d rather ignore. The setup is outrageous by design, but he’s been clear he wants the emotions under the mayhem to feel familiar even when the characters and situations go over the top.

“It ’s a gruesome Christmas present.”

First look, festival run

An exclusive first-look clip has arrived ahead of the film ’s screening at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Red Snow has already made the rounds at Fantastic Fest in Austin and at Sitges, building word-of-mouth for its blood-splattered take on yuletide.

Rautsi’s sweet spot: scary and absurd

Rautsi cites the Christmas-set films of Shane Black as a touchstone — using the season as a backdrop rather than the whole point — and he’s talked about horror as a place to admit what scares us while comedy lets us laugh at it. The deliberately absurd world of Red Snow keeps that balance front and center.

For anyone tracking his work, the new film fits neatly alongside his darkly comic genre projects:

• Helsinki Mansplaining Massacre — director (short)
• The Night of the Living Dicks — director (short)
• Hatching — writer
• Nightborn — writer

Next up for Red Snow: its stop at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.