‘The Damned’: Review

Dir: Thordur Palsson. UK/Iceland/Ireland/Belgium. 2024. 89mins

In the frozen Icelandic Westfjords of the late 19th century, members of a small isolated fishing outpost are engaged in a battle for survival even before a tragic event makes things significantly worse. With his feature debut The Damned, Icelandic director Thordur Palsson (known for Netflix series The Valhalla Murders) effectively turns this simple set-up into a chilling story of haunted psyches. The genre’s now-familiar post-trauma tropes are elevated by strong performances and a striking visual identity, which should attract an audience on release in the US on January 3, and in the UK a week later.

Powered to the finish by its creeping sense of dread

Shooting in Iceland, Palsson harnesses the bleak beauty of his almost-otherworldly location, a vast and anonymous grey-blue landscape. DoP Eli Arensen (Lamb) makes the most of this liminal space, lingering on both indistinct detail and anguished faces. Flickering candle-light and often-woozy framing add to the feeling of a community losing its moorings.

Eva (Odessa Young) inherited her boat from her husband, a fisherman who drowned in these unforgiving waters the season before. While her presence amongst these men is tolerated, it’s clear she is not seen as an equal; only Daniel (Joe Cole) seems to have any degree of affection for her — a fact that only puts Eva under more pressure, as she wrestles with feelings for him and guilt over her husband’s memory.

When a ship is wrecked off the coast, the men are quick to defer to Eva to make the decision about whether they should help; given the strength of the current and their meagre resources, a rescue could prove fatal for them all. Eva makes a difficult call; something that puts into motion the film’s slow-burn bend of morality play and psychological horror.

Despite the warnings of superstitious cook Helga (Siobhan Finneran), Eva is determined to stand by her decision, And when the bloated bodies of the dead sailors begin washing up on the shore, that would seem to be horrific enough. Soon, however, Eva and the men are seeing shapes in the darkness and hearing voices on the wind. 

The screenplay, by British writer Jamie Hannigan, digs heavily into Norse lore, specifically the story of the Draugur; an undead shapeshifter who infiltrates the minds of its victims. This idea of the monster as a manifestation of guilt and grief has become a central tenet of modern horror, from The Babadook to Hereditary, but still works here thanks largely to Young’s measured performance. Already fighting to hold her own in this inhospitable environment, Eva struggles to maintain self-control as logic and reason collapse around her. Her determination to cling on to her sanity keeps the story on an even keel as it makes its slow descent into madness.

Each of the men responds to events in their own way, which adds additional colour; some, like the quietly spoken Aron (Michael Og Lane) try to find sanctuary in their faith, others, like Hakon (Turlough Convery) think they can fight their way out of delirium.

Stephen McKeon’s ominous score blends with natural sound to emphasise the terror that darkness can bestow upon the mundane; the creaking of the wooden hut, the howling of the wind. And while there are perhaps a few too many jump scares, and an overwrought ending which takes some of the wind out of its sails, The Damned is powered to the finish by its creeping sense of dread.