Every film ought to have a signature image, and slow-burn supernatural chiller The Damned has a doozy: a body washed ashore shows unexpected signs of life, a stirring in the midsection … but surprise, slash the bloated stomach open and there’s an eel in there, wriggling about and presumably feasting on guts. Unfortunately nothing else provides quite so fulsomely gothic a moment, which is a shame, because it’s an arresting flourish.
Set in Iceland during the 19th century, The Damned is more about atmosphere and buildup than set pieces or delivery. The plot is light-touch. There’s a shipwreck off the coast where a tiny fishing community are barely scraping by. The community have a choice: try to help the shipwrecked people or let them perish. The more humane characters want to help while the more pragmatic ones point out that they barely have enough food to sustain themselves, and that adding 20 newbies to the mix would risk starvation. The pragmatists win the day but, after they turn their backs on their fellow humans, a series of eerie visions and mysterious deaths unfolds. Is an Icelandic folkloric spook out to get them, or is the source of their troubles more prosaic?
With its moral conundrum involving boats full of people that need helping, it might be tempting to infer a contemporary parable in this material. But the obvious parallel with vulnerable migrants attempting to secure aid from wealthy countries doesn’t stand up, because these Icelandic folks are so short on resources. They could starve if they take in the shipwrecked mariners; there are no billionaires here hoarding enough dried salt fish to last 10,000 years.
So while it may have more punch as chilly horror-drama than allegory, it’s a decently put together film. Director Thordur Palsson has assembled a well-cast gang of plausibly historical actors, familiar from the likes of Game of Thrones. Odessa Young is the standout as Eva, a young widow with a core of steel, and she carries us through to an ending that twists the knife, dramatically speaking, as an effective and memorable conclusion.
Source: theguardian.com
