The Damned surprises with just how effective it is. An expertly bleak but visually stunning moral dilemma-filled film, Thordur Palsson has delivered a settling chiller that you should give a chance to this January.
Eva (Odessa Young), a young widow in the 19th century, operates a winter fishing outpost in Iceland. During one particularly cruel winter, with barely any provisions to speak of for the outpost, she is forced to make an impossible choice when a foreign ship, carrying a crew in need of help, sinks off the coast of her Icelandic fishing village.
While all of the performances are great, the real star of The Damned is the setting; this Icelandic landscape is as bleak as they come for a film that centres around the guilt of leaving men to die. During the day, you marvel at the world we see, this is despite it being some of the most desolate and isolating places you could imagine being. At night, that bleak beauty is wiped away to leave an ice-cold, unknown darkness that places a fear in you that you know you cannot escape from.
This wonderful setting really sets us up for a chilling experience. There is a reason why films like The Thing and even 30 Days of Night place a certain fear into us all. Being in an isolated place is scary, but being in an isolated place that has unforgiving weather conditions, such as blizzards and freezing temperatures, just amps up that fear. Unless it is nighttime and a flame is near, Palsson and cinematographer Eli Arenson fill The Damned with an icy blue tint, making you could even while you sit somewhere relatively warm. They have figured out a way to get under our skin with the story and setting, and they never let that uncomfortable feeling leave us until they are ready to let it go.
Interestingly the story of The Damned is almost a horror film before the poor crew of the shipwreck enters our screens. Our team at the outpost are verging on making some very uncomfortable decisions about the rest of their winter as they resort to eating provisions they needed elsewhere. So desperation is already prevalent throughout all of the characters, and it pushes through as the story evolves, and the moral conundrum of helping others, even if it eventually creates your own demise, rears its gruesome head.
By having this fascinating opening act, we are given enough to feel for these lost souls in this almost otherworldly harsh environment. We ask ourselves, have our outpost crew already lost their sanity due to their own precarious position, or are they really being haunted by the souls of those they could and would not save? There, people are haunted by their conditions, and it feels like what is happening as the bodies of those not saved keep washing up on shore, weighing heavier and heavier on them.
The use of guilt and myths as a way to punish the living allows the cast to have their moments shine throughout the film. Odessa Young’s performance is a standout, as she is continually haunted as The Damned goes on, haunted by losing her husband and having to stay in a place that will only ever remain a reminder of what she lost. She is already on the edge of her senses, and the ominous words from Helga allow her to tip over the edge fully. Equally, the rest of the cast does some strong work here as they all nail that paranoid and beleaguered feeling that their characters all have.
The Damned is a film that can pull off the story as well as keep a gorgeous cinematic style to it. Our characters are trapped not only in their own eroding superstitious minds but on an icy prison of an island that will not forgive. You are enraptured by the slow, bleak terror that Palsson evokes here, making it a film that you need to search for.
★★★★
The Damned will be available in UK Cinemas from 10th January
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