You don't have to have a college degree to be spooked by Sauna -- an unapologetically deliberate period horror drama from Jade Warrior director Antti-Jussi Annila -- but it might help to at least be a history major. Instilled with an unsettling air of creeping dread, Sauna is set in the immediate aftermath of an extended 16th century war between Finland and Russia, as emissaries from both sides set out to redraw the borderlines between the two rival countries. A hard sell for English-speaking audiences due to the fact that director Annila and screenwriter Iiro Küttner focus more on exploring the philosophical impact of guilt and sin than explaining the story's many cultural nuances, the gorgeously shot film still has its fair share of interesting ideas and unsettling imagery for patient viewers who can remain focused for the film's transient 85-minute running time.
Finnish brothers Eerik (Ville Virtanen) and Knut (Tommi Eronen) are part of a joint Finnish-Russian commission charged with the responsibility of laying out geographical boundaries that both sides can agree on. Eerik has been fighting Russians for as long as he can remember, and keeps a running tally of his innocent victims. Knut, on the other hand, is a pacifist scholar and mapmaker who plans to teach at a major Swedish university once they complete their mission. One night, while dining in the home of a father/daughter whom he suspects of harboring Russian sympathies, Eerik snaps, viciously murdering the father as Knut locks the daughter in a root cellar to keep her safe from his violent brother. Before long, the duo has rejoined their Russian counterparts and fled town for fear of reprisal from the locals. Later, the group arrives in an unmapped village situated in the center of an uncharted swamp. There sits a sauna where legend states that all of one's sins can be washed away. Haunted by the specter of the little girl he left to die a horrible death underground, Knut is drawn to the sauna while trying to get a firm grasp on the ruinous hamlet's elusive history. When Knut's guilt becomes too much to handle, he ventures into the darkened sauna in search of redemption, instead discovering a horror beyond human comprehension.
There are plenty of interesting ideas and concepts at the filth-stained heart of Sauna; the only thing keeping it from achieving classic status on an international level is its stubborn unwillingness to provide the foreign viewer with any kind of cultural context. So, while Henri Blomberg's seductively bleak cinematography gives the film a suitably oppressive air, Küttner's concise screenplay seems to work against the atmosphere created by the camerawork, preventing the average viewer from connecting with the universal themes that drive the plot by neglecting to delve deeper into the culturally specific vehicles that it uses to do so. By no means should this be taken to imply that the film should have been "dumbed down" for mainstream consumption, rather to say that Küttner obviously possesses the talent to use subtlety in storytelling (as displayed by his effective means of highlighting the conflict between the two brothers), and that a few carefully placed indicators would have gone a long way in making the film a bit more coherent in the final act, when confusion takes precedence over genuine horror. For this reason, Sauna can't be recommended to any but the most dedicated of horror fans, and perhaps the slightly twisted philosophy or history student.