The Damned review – haunting but disappointing

In 19th century Iceland, the young widower Eve (Odessa Young) finds herself in charge of a fishing crew (Rory McCann, Siobhan Finneran, Turlough Convery, Lewis Gribben, Francis Magee and Mícheál Óg Lane​​), as the ice thickens and resources dwindle it is already clear their survival will be hard won, when they witness a ship sinking on the horizon, it is decided they can’t risk themselves to help a crew of strangers. However this utilitarian decision is one they will soon come to regret.

Thordur Pallson’s feature debut The Damned, is inspired by the Iceland folktales of ‘draugr’ which are undead men who return to seek revenge. Although the crew vary in their belief of folktales, the blinding snow and minimal candlelight soon leave them doubting as shadows creep into the periphery. As a gothic tale, The Damned, is straightforward, but the supernatural sightings quickly become unimaginative. There is nothing to differentiate this undead figure from any other ghost story and although we are consistently told the ‘draugr’ will drive crew to extreme acts little is offered which truly disturbs.

When eels crawl out of the guts of a washed up corpse, similar to the gag-wrenching beach scene in The Tin Drum (1979), The Damned sets a squeamish precedent early in its run time that I hoped it would soon triumph over. But instead, the promise that what is infecting the minds of Eve and her crew will drive them mad only manifests in the forms of brutish violence outbursts where men brawl with one another while scuffling across cramped cabins.

Despite its refusal to lean into the visceral imagery it sets out with, The Damned still succeeds in creating a haunting atmosphere, which is aided by the deserted Icelandic landscape that seems to stretch on forever. The barren beachside graveyard even serves as a nod to Nosferatu as the crucifix grave heads jut out from the frozen ground, a thematic paralleling between the monsters that become scapegoats in desperate times. Pairing this haunting gothic backdrop and the sound design that compliments Iceland’s Westfjords, the beauty of this frozen world unsettles.

Odessa Young, who spends much of the film walking across this drastic landscape, performs best as the rational voice to counteract those amongst her crew who are spreading folkloric misinformation. But her expression of misery plateaus early on and though the situation increasingly worsens it seems there’s no further depth of anguish for her to mine. Each discovery of loss is greeted with the same shock, despite her straining to maintain control over a dwindling crew.

A socio-political message can be gleaned from this icy ghost story: in austere times it is easy for us to make each other into monsters. But this isn’t something we are left to interpret for ourselves, as the film ends with a flashback that reveals the supernatural creatures true nature. What may have been intended as a chilling revelation, serves only as a reminder (one becoming increasingly frequent) that audiences are no longer to be trusted with the slightest inference. A disappointing end that takes away any ambiguity for us to chew on.