2008 - Directed by Antti-Jussi Annila
 Starring Ville Virtanen, Tommi Eronen, Dick Idman, Victor Klimenko and Kari Ketonen

A period piece set in 1595, the film opens with text indicating that the bloody 25 year war between Russia and Sweden has come to a close, leaving borders in flux and a small group sent to map out the newly established divisions between the two countries.  Two brothers, the aggressive Eerik (Virtanen), who has slain many in battle and his quiet cartographer sibling Knut (Eronen) are sent to meet with a Russian team and take stock of a disputed area of swampland.

 We meet Eerik as he murders a farmer that he claims pulled an axe on him; he’s obviously not too far removed from the battlefield and still very hot-tempered.  Eerik has been made obsolete by the end of the war, losing the only thing he’s ever been good at, but the really disturbing part of all this is that Knut doesn’t see the axe the man allegedly threatened him with, leaving a finger of doubt poking in his brain about his brother’s state of mind.  They lock the farmer’s daughter in a root cellar, leaving her behind to die, a move that leaves Knut riddled with guilt.

 The party they’re with is hesitant to enter a specific area of swampland, one which has remained largely unmapped, but Eerik insists that they carry out their task and heads further into the wild with Knut, who begins to be plagued by flashbacks to the farmer’s daughter, hinting at the darkness that may lurk within him as well.  Perhaps it runs in the family?

 Knut also begins to actually see the girl lurking in the woods behind them, which could be chalked up to guilt, but they soon stumble upon a dead dog that has clawed out its own eyes, adding to the foreboding they feel in the lifeless forest.

 They finally come to the center of the swamp, where they find a stark white building, a sauna that no one has ever known about, adjacent to an unknown peasant village.  The villagers are welcoming enough, but the group is still unnerved by their surprising presence in the middle of nowhere. Musko (Ketonen), the Russian leader even makes a point of keeping his men away from the strange sauna on the edge of the village, even as they seem drawn to it.

 Eerik calls a meeting with the village elders, who inform him that the local population is 73, which happens to be the same number of people that Eerik has killed during the war, though this coincidence doesn’t seem to faze him.  The elders are also rather evasive when asked directly who exactly built the sauna.  The only child in the village shows typical child-like interest in the strangers, though he claims ignorance when pressed about how long the village has been there.  The boy instead directs them to the only locked building in the village, where they discover a man named Roukkula (Idman) has been imprisoned, along with strange religious artifacts.  He gives them further clues/questions about the village’s origins, including a journal that Knut gives to Semenski (Klimenko) to translate, in hopes of unraveling the mysterious origins of this creepy village.

 The film’s slow pacing and methodical reveals may not be for all tastes, but to make a horror film that takes place during broad daylight and still manages to give off a creepy, unsettling vibe is quite the accomplishment.  Eerik is very compelling, painted as a tormented, half-blind relic of a world that no longer exists; he has no way to adapt to a life without war.  Knut on the other hand has been thrust into a world he doesn’t understand, his life has been one filled with books and education, and so the harsh realities and violence of Eerik’s world leave him tormented by most of what he sees, or what he has allowed to happen around him.

 I really enjoyed this film, and I think it would easily bear out repeated viewings, giving one the option of focusing on some smaller details that perhaps escaped you on the first viewing.  Even a cursory look at the web reveals numerous theories and interpretations of the events and motivations, so there’s plenty to delve into here, and the film has drawn comparisons to the works of Ingmar Bergman as well as Brad Anderson’s unsettling Session 9.  I’m not a huge Bergman fan myself, but I found a lot to puzzle over here, and find myself still thinking about the film even a week on from seeing it.

 Give it a look, it’s well worth a rental at the very least.

 7/10