- Starring
- Odessa Young, Joe Cole, Siobhan Finneran, Rory McCann
- Writers
- Jamie Hannigan
- Director
- Thordur Palsson
- Rating
- n/a
- Runtime
- 89 minutes
- Release Date
- n/a
Overall Score
Rating Summary
This will be one of several reviews from this year’s Tribeca film Festival. To follow our coverage, click here.
The Damned follows Eva (Young), a 19th-century widow tasked with making an impossible choice when, in the middle of an especially cruel winter, a ship sinks off the coast of her isolated fishing outpost. With provisions running low, Eva and her crew must choose between rescuing the shipwrecked and prioritizing their own survival. Facing the consequences of their choice and tormented by their guilt, the inhabitants wrestle with a mounting sense of dread and begin to believe they are all being punished for their choices.
The film puts its own spin on a classic horror tale, an Icelandic folklore inspired morality play, the kind of scary story the film’s band of fishermen might shared amongst themselves. It is in this inherent simplicity that director Thordur Palsson (making his feature film debut) impressively wrings every ounce of atmosphere he can from the icy mountainous setting, emphasizing the psychological horror and paranoia amidst the supernatural/mythic terror lurking in the background. The pitch black loneliness of the night sky illuminated only by the fire of a lamp, the opaque fogginess of a snow storm, or the rocky beaches against the frozen shoreline are one of many visuals audiences keep returning to. Whether the characters are cooped up in their cabins or out in the wilderness, the creeping dread and doubt is always around the corner making every location as claustrophobic as the last.
Due to the film’s emphasis on atmosphere to conjure scares, much of the weight is put onto the cast to properly convey the situation while also making them empathetic in the face of difficult decisions. The cast is uniformly strong with Young as the particular standout. Character details and backstory are dished out in lengthy conversations by indoor candlelight but the character work is at its most compelling when it is conveyed through hints of a longer history between characters and in the way they interact, with the actors adding those details through their performances. The Damned sets up its core dilemma and establishes the folklore horror early and effectively. Running at just 89-minutes, there is little fat on its bones. However, once at the middle act, the film has essentially laid out all of it’s cards on the table. The escalation of events stagnates and the scares get repetitive, and while the final images are certainly intriguing, they don’t quite make up for the film running out of steam.
Anchored by a strong cast and chilling atmosphere, The Damned effectively sets up the core tension and moral dilemma at the heart of its story but unfortunately, fails to get things going enough for it to land as strongly as it’s promising start does. While a solid and well crafted albeit flawed folklore horror film, Thordur Palsson is definitely a name to look out for in the future.
still courtesy of Protagonist Pictures
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