January is traditionally the dumping ground for films studios know are stinkers or have no real place else to put on a schedule. The Damned strangely falls under both categories. This film is both a stinker and an odd duck; a period horror film like Robert Eggers’ The VVitch that evokes both The Thing and Alien. But unlike those classics, The Damned, the debut from director Thordur Palsson, drags along until it reaches an ending so frustrating that surely will be all anyone remembers of it.
This film starts out promisingly with a widow, played by Odessa Young, trying to make the most out of a year’s fishing haul. It’s a been a very lean year, too, with the crew she hired struggling to bring in a haul. Her husband Magnus’ death the previous year hangs over both her and the crew. Then one night they spy a ship crashing near “The Teeth”, the deadly area in the bay where Magnus died. When some of that ship’s supplies wash ashore, the promise of more supplies to get them through the winter seems to outweigh the dangers. Her helmsman, a reliably grouchy Rory McCann, thinks so.
Courtesy of Vertical EntertainmentThat the attempt goes badly is no surprise. They return one crewman short and with barely any haul from the sunken ship. When bodies of that ship’s crew wash ashore, the superstitious housemaid warns against creating a draughr, a vengeful sea spirit. Once supplies go missing and crew members start dying under mysterious circumstances, the remaining individuals wonder if they have. Or is it one of them?
For most of its runtime, the film centers on survival in this deadly Arctic world. Cinematographer Eli Arenson captures this in beautiful shots of white, blue, and grey that show all of the desolation and deadly beauty of Iceland. If the draughr doesn’t get them, then their inability to get supplies or hold against the cold certainly will. But all of the beauty of its backgrounds, the characters in the foreground seem so lazily sketched in. Young is fine as the widowed Eva whose character is meant to be overwhelmed, but every other character never rises above their cliche. The characters might as well be named Crusty Seaman, Potential Love Interest, or superstitious old woman.
You’ll feel all 89 minutes of the runtime, but not in a fun way. This film drags. The VVitch might be a film that favors ambiance and long takes over direct action, but someone like Robert Eggers knows how to build dread with his brand of deliberate filmmaking while telling a story about false faith collapsing in face of evil. A film like Alien works because that is a movie not about a monster but about a monstrous corporation that sees workers as expendable if it can make a buck off that monster. Newcomer Palsson and screenwriter Jamie Hannigan make The Damned a stately period horror movie about survival in the face of impossible odds but not about why that matters.
Courtesy of Vertical EntertainmentThen everything in The Damned means nothing because of the ending. To steal from Roger Ebert and his scathing review of The Village, it’s maddening to talk about this film while discussing the ending in vague terms. Just know that the ending feels insulting to an audience that just invested 90 plodding minutes (and wastes Rory McCann) to get there. Our heroine gets no cathartic moment and truly was out of her depth. Any point about survival in impossible odds is rendered meaningless. This is a film made by people who seem to actively hate the characters in the situations that they just created.
Going back to Ebert’s review of The Village, he famously ends it wishing he could rewind time, avoid seeing the film, and then avoid spending money to see it. That’s the feeling I got once I reached the end of The Damned. One will likely want to use one of the wards in this film to exorcise the memory of seeing this. Instead, audiences will be cursed with the knowledge of a film this miscalculated.
The Damned is currently playing in the theaters.
English (US) · 