The Damned

🎥 Synopsis

In the description for The Damned (2024) by Thordur Palsson, the parceling of horrors spawned out of folk tales makes its home in the harsh terrains of 19th century Iceland. Eva (Odessa Young) is a tough widow who inherits her dead husband’s isolated fishing station. Now, as winter descends, her crew is increasingly desperate and low on supplies.

Once a foreign ship bursts into flames after crashing into rocks close to Eva’s location, she has to make a ghastly choice: whether to go out on a limb and try an unconventional rescue or whether it is better to ration the little supplies that her people have. Eva chooses the latter and she and her crew try succumbing to the impending dread. However, everything changes when claustrophobic anxiety coupled with eerie happenings seem to signal to what can only be deemed a prurient spirit from Norse mythology: the Draugr. Besieged by hallucinations, along with the paranoia ridden Eva is asking whether the horror is real, needs to look into the ghostly world or whether the horror beckons within their confines.

🌟 Lead Performances

Odessa Young as Eva – Young does not hold back in stepping into the shoes of her character and animating her inner conflict alongside stepping pain-free into the character of Eva where she has to untangle heaps of vexation.

Joe Cole as Daníel – Cole brings to life Eva’s subordinate who is torn between loyalty and pragmatism, easily able to put them into dangerous waters.

Rory McCann as Ragnar – McCann embodies Ragnar with his unflagging grit, portraying the helmsman as reliable and strategic yet dysfunctional and deeply pragmatic, which creates both friction and harmony.

Siobhan Finneran as Helga – Finneran’s character Helga captures a ritualistic superstitious quality that shapes ominous and artistic elements to the story, making it culturally rich.

🖋️ Central Ideas and Tone

The themes taken up in The Damned include:

Moral Deficiency or Ambiguity – Justifying harsh decisions regarding survival and exploring the consequences they come with ethically.

Isolation and Paranoia – The mental burden of being alone and the slender margin between reality and insanity are highlighted.

Folklore and Superstition – Contradictions of believing myths and myths woven in stories questions what one would constitute to be reality to question the dominion of belief in reality.

The film’s tone is sorrowful and atmospheric, with a slow-burning tension that mirrors the encroaching cold and darkness. Eli Arenson’s cinematography artistically captures the France’s Icelandic region together with the greatness of the stark beauty which serves the narrative’s accompanying desolation. Accompanied with the frightening tone set by Stephen McKeon’s score which together creates a negative feeling, the film’s eerie tone which serves the narrative’s accompanying harsh truth of 19th-century life is ironically set in dismal minimalist production design.

📝 Conclusion

The Damned (2024) explores human nature’s extremes in the interplay of the supernatural and the psychological. By relentless storytelling and captivating acting, the film makes one consider the dire impacts of decisions made in desperation and the chains that come attached to them.