A 19th-century widow has to make an impossible choice when, during an especially cruel winter, a foreign ship sinks off the coast of her Icelandic fishing village.
Chuck says:
While Thordur Palsson’s “The Damned” contains numerous shots of vast expanses, there’s a sense of claustrophobia to the film that ultimately proves unnerving. Taking place in the late 19th century in an unnamed Nordic village, the story’s inhospitable environment – a barren, rocky snowbound expanse bordered by rocky crags on three sides and the ocean on the other-proves to be the direst threat.
Her husband having died the previous year, it has fallen to Eva (Odessa Young) to run the very small fishing outfit in the isolated valley where she lives. With a crew of six reliable men, the group is facing a seemingly endless series of trials. Their catches have been small, to the point that starvation has become a real concern. Things get worse when, wrapping up their work one day, they spy a ship quickly sinking within sight of their shore. Though their first instinct is to help, Eva reluctantly decides they should not go to the aid of any survivors. Not having enough food for themselves, taking in more mouths to feed would mean their doom.
This decision comes back to haunt not only Eva, but the men as well. Helga (Siobhan Finneran), the company’s maid and cook, warns them of Draugurs, zombies who were once men, but died at sea. They ignore her pleas to tie the limbs and pound nails into the corpses that have washed ashore, these being ways to hobble these supernatural beings. Her concerns are brushed aside as just so much superstition…that is, until things start to go bump in the night.
Palsson creates a sense of dread that mounts throughout, visions of the Draugurs occurring in a matter-of-fact manner that is genuinely disturbing. Equally effective is Eli Arenson’s cinematography, the icy blues of the hard environment butting up against shadow-filled interiors that may or may not contain a member of the undead. His work helps create a sense of encroaching, inescapable doom that gets under your skin.
Though its running time is less than 90 minutes, the film drags at times, the story becoming repetitious. While this may have been done purposely to underscore the monotony of the characters’ existence, it does the narrative no favors. However, in the end “The Damned” emerges as an effective thriller, as well as an intriguing moral conundrum.
3 Stars
