Thordur Palsson’s feature debut is a chilling film that promises a tale of guilt and self-preservation for viewers able to endure the cold. 

It is the dead of winter and the solstice promises longer days on the horizon. Until then, Eva (Odessa Young) and the crew of hungry fishermen drown their worries with steins of beer, sea shanties, and candle-lit ghost stories to muffle the sounds of their grumbling bellies. Just as the crew readies themselves for their next day at sea, hoping to fill their empty racks, a wrecked ship can be seen just off the shore–stuck in a formation of rocks referred to as “the teeth” as if the ocean the the mouth of a colossal monster waiting to swallow you up. They watch powerlessly, taking orders to not risk their own lives for the men drowning just beyond their reach, reminded that they lost Master Magnus, Eva’s late husband, to those very same rocks. 

Once a barrel of cargo washes ashore, the salted meat packaged inside goads the men into the wreckage in search of more food, like salivating dogs after a bone. As they approach the wreckage, panic ensues when they come face to face with survivors clinging helplessly to the rocks. The crew’s boats, intended for a raid rather than a rescue mission, are swarmed by these desperate men who plunge themselves into the unforgiving Arctic sea and towards their final hope for survival. The incident causes them to lose their helmsman, Ragnar (Rory McCann), and only further traumatize the still starving men. Pale-blue corpses, with sandy and salt-crusted skin and hair, litter the beach, reminding them of the lives they left for dead. When they bury the shipwrecked men, Helga, an elderly charwoman, spreads superstitions that they could come back as draugrs—undead creatures of Norse mythology–a fear that pulls Eva and the fishermen into the depths of grief and guilt-ridden nightmares. Feelings of dread are painted atop gorgeous Icelandic landscapes, captured by cinematographer Eli Arenson, known for his work on films like Lamb, The Watchers, and The Deliverance. The snow emanates a pale blue glow against the black void of the night sky. The eerily endless, moonlit nights are contrasted with the angelic morning sun, just peaking through enough to grant purple hues and feelings of hope. This hope is rewarded with a fruitful catch but Eva feels haunted, catching glimpses of waterlogged, undead men and hearing cryptic knocking as if sensing the approach of an ominous force. It then becomes clear that the fishermen’s latest haul might be their last supper. 

This promising premise slows in the second act, with death creeping slowly towards each member of the crew. Although Helga had instilled ideas of draugrs, poisoning Eva’s psyche with these grotesque visions, the men meet their fate in unfortunate yet earthly circumstances. Draugrs, supernatural reanimated corpses with glowing eyes and a vengeance against the living, are more than just zombie like monsters but staples of Nordic folklore because of how they represent the fears of coming face to face with your own mortality. The burial mounds used to protect from draugrs represent the barrier between the dead and the living, a barrier to prevent the ghosts of unresolved pasts from haunting you. These burial practices, such as nailing down the feet or rotating coffins, as Helga instructs the men, illustrates a complex notions of an afterlife that predate the spread of Christine doctrine in the regions–and the tension between Helga, whose stories are disregarded as old wives’ tales, and some of the men who prefer to turn towards protection from God, illustrates these tensions between folk practices and Christian faith. 

Eva’s visions of draugrs, manifested as glimpses of glowing eyes and sea-soaked dark figures lurking about, are evidence of her guilt over the decisions she has made to act on self-preservation. Clinging onto the only place she can call home, she does everything she can to endure and prove that there is a truth to the words spoken to her by Magnus before his passing, that this outpost is “a place of opportunity if you can endure the cold, the long nights, the hunger.” This desperation and refusal to leave a land that is no longer fruitful is the nail in the coffin for this fishing crew–but for audiences that endure the icy crawl into the final moments of The Damned, the truth behind the nightmare will be revealed. 

You can’t help but feel the chill in the air and cling onto any flickering warmth found in a moody and atmospheric film like The Damned. Odessa Young is endearing as Eva. The sincerity she brings to the character helps communicate the care she has in her heart for each of the fishermen at her outpost, despite the tension caused by their fight for survival. The pain she harbors is clearly written across her windburned and rosy cheeks, allowing the viewer to hold forgiveness in their hearts for Eva, despite the guilt she herself cannot expel. Although much of director Thordur Palsson and his co-writer Jamie Hannigan’s successes lie in television, such as Hannigan’s work on the HBO series The Woman in the Wall, and Palsson’s Netflix series The Valhalla Murders, they have without a doubt added their names to the lexicon of Icelandic horror. 

Grade: B

Oscar Prospects
Likely: None
Should Be Considered: None

Where to watch: On Demand