The Damned review – haunt­ing but disappointing

In 19^th cen­tu­ry Ice­land, the young wid­ow­er Eve (Odessa Young) finds her­self in charge of a fish­ing crew (Rory McCann, Siob­han Finner­an, Tur­lough Con­very, Lewis Gribben, Fran­cis Magee and Mícheál Óg Lane​), as the ice thick­ens and resources dwin­dle it is already clear their sur­vival will be hard won, when they wit­ness a ship sink­ing on the hori­zon, it is decid­ed they can’t risk them­selves to help a crew of strangers. How­ev­er this util­i­tar­i­an deci­sion is one they will soon come to regret.

Thor­dur Pallson’s fea­ture debut The Damned, is inspired by the Ice­land folk­tales of ​‘drau­gr’ which are undead men who return to seek revenge. Although the crew vary in their belief of folk­tales, the blind­ing snow and min­i­mal can­dle­light soon leave them doubt­ing as shad­ows creep into the periph­ery. As a goth­ic tale, The Damned, is straight­for­ward, but the super­nat­ur­al sight­ings quick­ly become unimag­i­na­tive. There is noth­ing to dif­fer­en­ti­ate this undead fig­ure from any oth­er ghost sto­ry and although we are con­sis­tent­ly told the ​‘drau­gr’ will dri­ve crew to extreme acts lit­tle is offered which tru­ly disturbs.

When eels crawl out of the guts of a washed up corpse, sim­i­lar to the gag-wrench­ing beach scene in The Tin Drum (1979), The Damned sets a squea­mish prece­dent ear­ly in its run time that I hoped it would soon tri­umph over. But instead, the promise that what is infect­ing the minds of Eve and her crew will dri­ve them mad only man­i­fests in the forms of brutish vio­lence out­bursts where men brawl with one anoth­er while scuf­fling across cramped cabins.

Despite its refusal to lean into the vis­cer­al imagery it sets out with, The Damned still suc­ceeds in cre­at­ing a haunt­ing atmos­phere, which is aid­ed by the desert­ed Ice­landic land­scape that seems to stretch on for­ev­er. The bar­ren beach­side grave­yard even serves as a nod to Nos­fer­atu as the cru­ci­fix grave heads jut out from the frozen ground, a the­mat­ic par­al­lel­ing between the mon­sters that become scape­goats in des­per­ate times. Pair­ing this haunt­ing goth­ic back­drop and the sound design that com­pli­ments Iceland’s West­fjords, the beau­ty of this frozen world unsettles.

Odessa Young, who spends much of the film walk­ing across this dras­tic land­scape, per­forms best as the ratio­nal voice to coun­ter­act those amongst her crew who are spread­ing folk­loric mis­in­for­ma­tion. But her expres­sion of mis­ery plateaus ear­ly on and though the sit­u­a­tion increas­ing­ly wors­ens it seems there’s no fur­ther depth of anguish for her to mine. Each dis­cov­ery of loss is greet­ed with the same shock, despite her strain­ing to main­tain con­trol over a dwin­dling crew.

A socio-polit­i­cal mes­sage can be gleaned from this icy ghost sto­ry: in aus­tere times it is easy for us to make each oth­er into mon­sters. But this isn’t some­thing we are left to inter­pret for our­selves, as the film ends with a flash­back that reveals the super­nat­ur­al crea­tures true nature. What may have been intend­ed as a chill­ing rev­e­la­tion, serves only as a reminder (one becom­ing increas­ing­ly fre­quent) that audi­ences are no longer to be trust­ed with the slight­est infer­ence. A dis­ap­point­ing end that takes away any ambi­gu­i­ty for us to chew on.