Macabre...ish Horror Review: Sauna

 

 

Sauna, 2008/ 83 min.

 

 

Also know as Evil Rising and Filth, is a Finnish horror about brothers, Erik and Knut, who are tasked to mark the border between Finland and Russia after the war. But they never made it to their destination, the year was 1595.

 

 Brotherly love...

 

Things start getting weird as they approach a village in the middle of a swamp. Knut keeps seeing a dead girl, he’s sure it’s one they left behind in a cellar.

 

 

In the village the people are superstitious, no children have been born there since the people settled and they live in fear, of...something. They’re even afraid to die. Because new born babies and the dead are bathed in the sauna. And the sins of the dead are washed away.

 

 

But their’s is different. The local sauna predates the village, no one knows how it got there but the Monks that built the church near it believed that sin could be cleansed there, without prayer or apology.

But that sin, that evil goes somewhere...

 

The commission carries the sin of war and Erik carries a body count of 74 but the weight of it is carried by his brother Knut. They all realize, to late, what they’re up against. Erik tries redeeming himself in his last desperate acts.

 

Maybe he’ll be spared and cleansed in the Sauna?

 

 

This movie is eerie and bleak, I can’t say it’s obviously scary but it gets under your skin. Not much gore but there are graphic moments. This is more psychological thriller or mystery than anything. When it was over, I was just sad. It’s a heavy movie. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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