Welcome to Finland’s Least Popular Tourist Destination
If you’ve ever thought, “Hey, I wish Friday the 13th were slower, sadder, and somehow colder,” then The Island of Doommight be your cinematic spirit animal. Finnish filmmaker Keke Soikkeli’s 2023 slasher is a bold attempt to resurrect the backwoods horror genre in a land better known for depressing dramas and death metal festivals. Unfortunately, the only thing The Island of Doom successfully resurrects is the audience’s desire to check their phone every five minutes.
It’s a movie that promises terror, delivers tourism footage, and somehow manages to make both camping and murder feel like chores. If IKEA made a slasher film, it would probably look like this — pretty, practical, and completely devoid of emotional assembly.
The Setup: Boyfriend Trouble and Bad Decisions
Our heroine Mia (Sonja Aiello) discovers that her boyfriend Eetu is cheating on her — presumably because even he couldn’t stand another act of this script. Heartbroken, she moves in with her friend Maija (Emma Lahti), who has all the emotional intelligence of a houseplant and the kind of ideas that should come with a warning label.
Maija decides the cure for heartbreak isn’t therapy or wine or even blocking Eetu’s number — no, she drags Mia to a summer bar with a group of friends who look like they were cast from a reality show that never aired. Among them are Rami, Laura, and Kimmo, all of whom are defined exclusively by their ability to hold beer cans and deliver exposition.
At the bar, Mia meets Teemu, a porter who’s apparently irresistible because he’s the only man in Finland without visible emotional damage. In a stroke of genius, the group decides to cheer up Mia by camping on a remote island known as the “Island of Doom,” a place with a name so subtle it could only have been invented by someone who’s never seen a horror movie before.
The Legend: Once Upon a Time, a Boy Was Bad
Like all self-respecting slashers, The Island of Doom comes equipped with a creepy local legend. Years ago, a boy killed his baby sister and was banished to the island by his father — which, in fairness, is a pretty extreme grounding technique. Naturally, the boy died, and naturally, his vengeful spirit (or maybe his weirdly spry corpse) now stalks anyone dumb enough to visit.
The film treats this urban legend with the kind of reverence normally reserved for IKEA assembly manuals. The story is told around a campfire, with all the enthusiasm of people reading an HR memo. By the time someone says, “He’s still out there,” you’re already wondering if you can legally leave an island-based movie halfway through without notifying the coast guard.
The Atmosphere: Finland, But Make It Boring
To be fair, The Island of Doom looks nice — in that bleak, overcast Scandinavian way that makes you want to put on a sweater and contemplate mortality. The cinematography captures misty lakes, lonely trees, and endless gray skies. It’s almost beautiful, until you realize it’s just disguising how little is actually happening.
For a movie set in the wilderness, it’s shockingly lifeless. You can almost hear the mosquitoes screaming for better representation. The camera lingers on the scenery like it’s hoping something — anything — interesting might wander into frame. Spoiler: nothing does.
Even the murder scenes are polite to the point of invisibility. Victims disappear quietly, blood is scarce, and the killer — when he finally shows up — looks like he wandered in from a Nordic noir audition he didn’t get.
The Killer: A Man, A Mask, A Mild Inconvenience
Ah yes, the killer. The film builds him up like some dark, mythic force of nature. When he’s finally revealed to be (drum roll, please) Eetu, Mia’s cheating boyfriend, it lands with all the impact of a deflated sauna balloon. Apparently, Eetu has decided that murder is a better coping mechanism than guilt, and has donned a mask to stalk his ex and her friends.
It’s not a bad twist — it’s just that by the time it arrives, you’ve stopped caring about who’s behind the mask. He could’ve been Eetu, or Teemu, or the ghost of Finnish cinema itself, and it would’ve made about as much sense.
His motives? Vague. His methods? Clumsy. His presence? Minimal. This is a slasher where the killer kills because, well, the genre requires it, and the audience demands at least some action between the long, scenic pauses.
The Victims: Cabin Fever Without the Cabin
You know you’re in trouble when the film’s human characters make you root for the guy with the knife.
There’s Laura, whose primary purpose is to say “I have a bad feeling about this” every ten minutes until the killer grants her wish. There’s Rami, who disappears halfway through the movie, possibly to audition for a better one. And then there’s Kimmo, who exists purely to be shirtless and confused.
Mia herself is fine — Sonja Aiello does her best with the material, giving us a protagonist who alternates between sobbing over her cheating ex and running in the wrong direction. She’s not bad, exactly. She’s just… there, like a mildly concerned tour guide leading you through a haunted IKEA showroom.
The Tone: Not Scary, Not Funny, Just… There
What makes The Island of Doom truly special is its uncanny ability to avoid being anything. It’s not scary enough to be horror, not funny enough to be parody, and not tragic enough to be drama. It just sort of exists, like a cursed VHS tape that plays on loop in purgatory.
There are long stretches of silence that feel less like tension and more like the sound designer went home early. Conversations happen in slow, halting bursts, as if the actors are reading lines translated from Finnish into English and then back again by Google Translate.
Even the soundtrack seems confused, alternating between mournful piano and what sounds suspiciously like stock “campfire ambience.”
The Message: Don’t Cheat, Don’t Camp, Don’t Watch This
If there’s a moral buried somewhere beneath the cold Finnish mud, it’s probably “don’t date men named Eetu.” Beyond that, The Island of Doom doesn’t have much to say. It flirts with ideas about guilt, revenge, and urban legends, but never commits. Like Mia’s ex, it promises more than it delivers and leaves you regretting your time together.
By the end, the survivors (whoever’s left — it’s honestly hard to tell) stare out over the lake, pondering their fate. The film fades to black, and you’re left wondering if the island’s real curse was the runtime.
The Final Verdict: A Trip to Forget
The Island of Doom is the cinematic equivalent of a long, awkward camping trip where everyone forgets the food, the tent collapses, and someone inevitably reads a ghost story that puts you to sleep instead of scaring you.
It’s competently made, occasionally atmospheric, and utterly joyless — the kind of film that makes you wish the killer would pick up the pace just so you can leave.
If Finland ever wanted to discourage tourism, this would make an excellent commercial.
Rating: 3/10 — Come for the scenery, stay because the boat disappeared, die of boredom before the killer finds you.
