From writer Jamie Hannigan and writer/director Thordur Palsson comes The Damned, a supernatural horror movie about a woman who owns a fishing outpost on the coast and the curse that she brings upon the outpost. Faced with the specter of starvation, she and the men who work the outpost leave a shipwrecked crew to die among the rocks rather than risk not having enough supplies to share with them. But such a sin can not go unpunished.
The movie starts with Eva (Odessa Young) revealing through narration the everpresent threat of starvation that she and the men who work the fishing outpost face every winter. Eva, the men, and Helga (the cook? it’s actually unclear) are celebrating midwinter/the solstice, when Helga tells a scary story, setting the tone of the movie and what is to follow. The next morning, as the men are about to put the boat out to sea, they witness a shipwreck far off the coast, around an area where Eva’s husband, Magnus, met his death. Some of the men want to try to help; others say that they are having a hard enough time providing for themselves and that they shouldn’t try to rescue the crew. Eva makes the final call, for the safety of the men as well as their ability to get through the rest of the winter. The next day, a barrel of salted meat washes up on shore, spurring Eva and Ragnar (Rory McCann), the helmsman, to venture out with the other men to the rocks to see what else they can scavenge. There, they discover about half a dozen shipwrecked men sheltered among the rocks. In a horrifying scene of human cruelty, Ragnar tells his fellows that that many extra men will swamp the boat and Eva instructs them to leave. But the shipwrecked men swim after them. Ragnar is lost overboard and Daniel (Joe Cole) kills one of the shipwrecked men. The fishermen leave the shipwrecked men to die. The next day, four corpses wash up on shore, including the man Daniel killed. Helga tells them that the dead have turned to draugr and have come for their revenge.
The Damned reminded me of The Thing in both setting and tone of the story. It also felt like a classic horror movie in which the horror being visited on the characters comes from their transgressions, serving as a morality play. Under ninety minutes, the story is well-paced, the ratcheting horror leaving space for the sexual tension between Eva and Daniel, as well as other characters to have their moments. The ending left me a little cold as the final payoff didn’t fit into the rest of the story for me. But it was still a solid ending that tied up the story well.
If you have Hulu, I’d definitely recommend watching this one. It might even be worth a 7-day trial, if you have other movies/shows available on the service you’ve been wanting to check out.
The Chimerical Dark 