Tina Kakadelis
Based on the title alone, it’s a safe assumption that the characters in The Damned are doomed. Whether these dire circumstances are of their own making or not is something the audience will have to discover for themselves. Writer/director Thordur Palsson immerses the viewers in the brutal world of an Icelandic fishing village in the 19th century, a time where myths and folklore could hold as much weight as the tangible and visible world. The Damned is a horror film wrapped in a morality play that finds itself slightly adrift.
Eva (Odessa Young) runs a fishing station in a remote village in Iceland. It’s winter, and there’s a thick layer of snow coating the beaches. Life here is harsh, and the situation is becoming grave because of meager fishing returns. The fish that were supposed to be used as bait are now the only source of food. Early one morning, Eva and her fellow villagers see a ship sinking offshore. They must decide if they want to risk their lives to save the shipwrecked sailors or preserve what little they have to survive. No matter what they decide, the choice they make will haunt them forever.
There’s something deeply destabilizing about the setting of The Damned. For those who have grown up with a decent amount of technology, it’s hard to comprehend the depth of isolation. The opening scene shows the sprawling, harsh environment that Eva and the villagers are trying to survive in. It’s an icy, hopeless, secluded wasteland. This sets the stage for the creation of folklore and myths to make sense of the surroundings. There are burial rituals, celebrations, and stories that are critical to maintaining a level of stasis. Humans, for as long as they’ve existed, are desperate to make sense of the unexplainable. Often, though, the truth is far scarier than anything the humans could cook up.
The catalyst of The Damned is the decision the villagers are faced with. Do they risk their lives for the potential survival of strangers? There’s a distinct possibility that the villagers will spend so much of their fleeting energy and resources to save people who have already frozen to death. The Damned is asking its characters and its viewers to determine the value of a human life. What’s the moral course of action in this case? It’s a question that lingers for all involved, and one that audience members will likely be asking their friends as they exit the theater.
After the characters in the film make their decision, they’re plagued with the consequences of their actions. The Damned is a horror movie, but it’s not about a strange, never-before-seen monster. The monster of The Damned is the humans. Their fragile social structure suddenly falls apart and they’re at odds with one another. The film mines the depths and complexities of human nature to weave a folkloric fable of sorts in the form of a psychological thriller.
Unfortunately, the twist of an ending one comes to expect from this genre doesn’t fully land. For all its atmospheric, eerie world-building, The Damned’s ending is a letdown, but one that Young, as Eva, does her best to sell. The twist is the expected outcome and doesn’t challenge the viewer in the same way as the lead-up to the finale. The morality question The Damned poses is compelling and potentially polarizing, but the resolution takes a lot of wind out of its sails. There’s something deeper at play here, and the ending is far too neat for the tangled web that has been woven.
Inevitably, The Damned will draw comparisons to Robert Eggers’ The VVitch for its sinister atmospheric horror and deep roots in the culture of a specific place. The film is embedded in Iceland. It was shot there and it shows how irreplaceable on-location shoots are. Without the stark emptiness of Iceland, The Damned would be missing a character. While the film is fairly paint-by-numbers in terms of the expectations of the genre, it shows off first-time feature director Palsson’s keen eye for sinister stories.
