THE DAMNED (2024)

New in theaters in the US and UK, coming soon On Demand from Vertical Entertainment!
Directed by Thordur Palsson.
Written by Jamie Hannigan, Thordur Palsson.
Check out the trailer here!!

Trailer: https://youtu.be/1itnHQHgxUI
His young widower named Eva (Odessa Young) inherits the responsibilities of a fishing outpost after her husband perished along the rocks in the treacherous waters off coast of a 19th century Icelandic village. Since her husband’s demise, the fish have been scarce, and the crew are tired and hungry. When a foreign ship crashes along the very same rocks that killed her husband, Eva makes the hard decision to leave them to die as rushing to their aid would only make less food and supplies for the crew. But making this decision may have evoked a primal curse which causes madness and death to spread across her small village like the plague.

Man, is this a bleak one. The overpowering force of THE DAMNED lays in its atmosphere. Even if you aren’t experiencing winter chills right now, you’re going to feel the bitter cold these fishermen and two women have to endure. The frozen muddy beaches. The layers of clothes the actors wear and the way they cling desperately to them ensured that this was most likely a pretty miserable shoot. The wear and tear of this cold climate can be seen on the weathered faces of the entire cast. This is no glamor flick with polished actors. This is a swarthy and dismal time director Thordur Palsson has captured with every frozen frame of THE DAMNED. The chill becomes a character in itself, ever present and ever threatening.

THE DAMNED isn’t a thrill a minute. It’s one of those slow starters, letting the story seep in like the cold under a cabin door. THE DAMNED is much more about superstition and paranoia and those are details best left not rushed to. These people are at their wits end, famished, and exhausted, now heap on the guilt of leaving an entire crew out in the cold to die, and this makes for the darkest of psychological horrors. It’s that same kind of feelings of paranoia and peril that permeated the pinnacle of snow-covered horror, John Carpenter’s THE THING. I guess it is the cold outside, forcing one to stay inside and in close quarters with one another that pushes that paranoia to the max. Whatever it is, it works its magic in THE DAMNED as well.

THE DAMNED keeps the true threat under wraps for most of the film while the crew become more paranoid and end up dying one by one. The superstitious crew blame a monstrous curse, but the true horror comes in the final moments. It’s a really intriguing way to end the film, saying much about the power of suggestion and shared psychosis in perilous situations.

Beautifully shot with a whole lot of scenes of gorgeous landscapes of places I don’t ever want to go, THE DAMNED is a moody and dismal movie that deals with some deep and dark psychosis. There are some very strong acting turns, especially from the lead Odessa Young, DOWNTON ABBEY’s Siobhan Finneran as the elder caretaker of the crew, and GREEN ROOM’s Joe Cole as one of the fishermen. But the cold takes center stage. You’ll want to bundle up for THE DAMNED. It’s a nippy one, for sure. But it’s also damn fine psychological and gothic horror reminiscent of those moody Hammer films of old.

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Music Written by Tim Heidecker
Music & Arrangement by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy https://youtu.be/PDySbxQgZMg
(I do not own this music)