‘The Damned’ Movie Review: Period Horror Film Is Full Of Chilly Mood But Underwhelms
Photo from Vertical
From Jeremy Kibler
January—formerly a dumping ground for movies—actually feels like the most ideal month to see The Damned. It’s a well-made piece of period horror that feels as cold, wet, and harsh as it is outside. Directed by Icelandic native Thordur Palsson, the film works most effectively when leaning into this oppressively chilly mood for this story set in a remote fishing village during the 1800s. If only the narrative added up to a more meaningful and satisfying experience in the end.
It’s a tough winter when you’re an Icelandic fisherman, and tough choices have to be made. Eva (Odessa Young), the young widow of a fisherman, must make a decision if she and the inhabitants want to continue surviving off the land and sea. When there’s a shipwreck off in the distance, there’s division in whether or not they should help the survivors, based on having no space or extra mouths to feed. Supplies wash up on shore, but so do eel-infested corpses. And more death is coming, thanks to “the draugur” (to you and me, the undead), and insanity and starvation ensue.
Co-written by director Palsson and Jamie Hannigan, the film is like John Carpenter’s The Thing in the broadest of strokes, as there’s a mounting sense of paranoia within a group of people living in a cruelly cold milieu. Like Robert Eggers with The Witch, Palsson really seems to have done his homework in terms of authenticity. He draws from Icelandic history and folklore to enhance the sense of dread and doom, and some slurpy sound design and unsettling imagery don’t hurt.
Odessa Young fares solidly well, making Eva a capable figure who’s in charge of the fishing outpost after her husband died at the hands of a rock formation called “the Teeth.” The guilt and remorse that weigh on her make Eva most compelling; everyone else is an anonymously defined man with a beard, but at least no actor sticks out in a way that breaks the spell of the 19th-century period.
As this feature debut begins looking, sounding, and playing out like a lot of other, superior movies, The Damned doesn’t so much unravel like its protagonist as just spins its wheels. Then once a reveal is introduced, the wind goes out of the film’s sails, so to speak. Thordur Palsson does have all of the pieces in place, and a hostile setting on his side, but the final product just ends with an underwhelming shrug — and the desire to warm up next to a fire afterwards.
Rating: 2.5/5
The Damned is now playing in theaters.
