Winter is a hard time of year, even now in the modern day there are still lives lost each year due to the cold, so imagining life in a snowed in Icelandic fishing outpost in the 19th century is in itself a frightening scenario, as death looms over the inhabitants each day. If The Damned, from first time director Thordur Palsson, were simply a story of this small group of people trying to survive a brutal winter it would be dramatic enough, but when dark and supernatural forces begins to close in on the fishing outpost it makes their previous attempts to survive seem idyllic in comparison.
The Damned tells the story of Eva (Odessa Young), a young widow who is now the sole owner of a small fishing outpost on the Icelandic coast, a place she and her husband used to run together before his death of a series of jagged rocky spurs just off the coast the year before. Despite this loss Eva wishes to continue on the work, having no other family to go to or place to call home. Instead, the men who once worked with her husband have become something of a surrogate family to her. With winter in full swing times have been hard, and catches have been light, forcing them to ration their supplies to get through the snowy months.
When the fishermen are preparing to leave one morning, however, Eva spots a ship stuck against the same rocks that claimed her husbands life. The men watch as the ship sinks into the icy waters. Knowing that any survivors are doomed unless they help them, a difficult decision must be made. With barely enough supplies to get through winter more mouths to feed would certainly doom them all, so Eva makes the decision that they won't help any of the sailors. However, disturbing visions begin to plague the fishing outpost as the bodies of the sailors wash up on the beach. It seems that in their inaction Eva may have begun a series of events that has unleashed a terrible supernatural force upon them all; one that won't stop until it has had revenge.
The Damned is a film that oozes atmosphere, and is the thing that drew me to it initially. The setting is eerie and unsettling even without the addition of supernatural forces, and straddles the line between beautiful and frightening. And this is used to great effect throughout the film. Even during the day it feels like there's barely enough light, and instead of the crisp, bright white of snow that you imagine when you think of it, it's instead dirty, gloomy, as if the land itself is as tired and depressed as the people who are calling it home this long winter. Because of this even when the film ventures out into the wide open during the day it still manages to feel oppressive, and there's no relief from the tension that's built throughout.
There are several scenes that use the snowy setting wonderfully too, and really highlights how winter is a fantastic time in which to place a horror story. Whether it's figures barely glimpsed out in the blanket of fog and snow that swirls around the characters, or the dark shape that slowly creeps across the snow towards the camera, there are moments where you're left wondering what it is you're seeing in a way that really gets inside your head.
A lot of this is down to the nature of the supernatural presence in the film too. One of the characters, an old woman named Helga (Siobhan Finneran) informs the group that she believes a drauger is haunting their settlement, a creature that's part ghost, part undead. There are times when things in the film don't really make sense, when you're unsure if you're seeing a ghost or a real person, and others where you wonder if perhaps the old folk takes have gotten inside the troubled minds of a guilty conscience and is causing that person to see something that's not real. The film does give you some answers, clearing away any confusion and gives you a very concrete answer as to what's happening; and for me it actually weakens the movie somewhat. If the film had ended a minute or two earlier I think that it would have been much more satisfying, and the unanswered questions would have been thematically more fitting.
Despite the film having pretty sparse dialogue the film manages to make you care about the characters pretty quickly, and they're a likable and interesting bunch. A mixture of seasoned old fishermen and younger men looking to make it through the winter, the men that surround Eva feel more akin to a family than anything else. It's clear that they've known each other and worked together for many years, and there's never any moments where you worry about the men turning against Eva, or someone revealing a dark desire towards her. Instead, the tension comes from without, and as such we see how each of the characters reacts to it, and how it tests the bonds that they have.
The Damned also feels strangely pertinent to the modern times, despite being set in the 19th century. The woman in charge of a small community who has to justify her decisions and actions in a way that a man doesn't, the trials of surviving through hard times, and the way communities can become insular and selfish instead of helping others when faced with foreigners arriving on their shores all reflect very prominent discussions from today. It shows that whilst times change people are largely the same, and that we've not really progressed all that much. The result is a film that makes it easy to connect with, one that draws you in with the relatable characters and their familiar struggles before it takes a darker turn into the supernatural.
Thanks to the rich atmosphere and beautiful cinematography, some genuinely eerie music, and superb acting The Damned ends up being a really entertaining movie, one that I found myself wanting to spend more time with. Other than a final two minutes that I felt weakened it a little (a personal choice which others might have the exact opposite view of), I had a wonderful time with it, and can't wait to see what the director gives us next. A superb directorial debut that ends up being one of the better winter horrors.
The Damned will be released in UK cinemas on 10th January 2025.
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