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Twitch - Let us start with this. If I see a better flat out horror film than AJ Annila‘s wonderfully twisted Sauna in 2008, I’ll eat my shirt. This film is a major growth from his ambitious, yet fatally flawed 2006 genre fusion urban drama and wuxia epic, Jade Warrior. Where that film was rigid and strained, this one soars into the dark places of the minds of men effortlessly flowing to its soon-to-be iconic conclusion. It is fitting that Finland is half way between America and Japan, because Sauna takes the stylings and tropes of best of American Art-Horror and J-Horror and froths them together into something that is mesmerizing and uniquely Scandinavian. The result, a period film which is impossible to actually identify the period, lies somewhere in the neighborhood of Edgar Allen Poe and the opening credits for Lars Von Trier‘s The Kingdom. Those enthusiastic for Fabrice Du Weltz‘s Calvaire (an film that polarized viewers as much as I expect Sauna will) or John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds are going to be in a state of bliss while this film unleashes its own brand of existential quagmire… [Full Story]
