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:
With a thorny ethical dilemma at its core and clever use of its natural surroundings, Thordur Palsson’s “The Damned” if a film concerned with moral and physical claustrophobia. Taking place in the late 19th century in an unnamed Nordic village, its inhospitable environment – a barren, rocky snowbound expanse bordered by rocky crags on three sides and the ocean on the other-proves to be a dire, inescapable threat. However, the ramifications resulting from a life-and-death situation is what comes to haunt each member of this small outpost.
Her husband having died the previous year, it has fallen to Eva (Odessa Young) to run the fishing outfit in the isolated valley where she lives. She and her crew of six reliable men have endured one setback after another. For far too long, their catches have been small, so much so that they’ve taken to eating their bait. Starvation is in the offing if this continues.
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 spell their doom.
This decision doesn’t sit well with any of them and when they finally set out to help, they’re met with four frightened survivors who they kill when they threaten to swamp their tiny boat. They give them a decent burial but not one that will keep their spirits at bay according to Helga (Siobhan Finneran), the company’s maid and cook. She 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’ feet, these actions said 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. Their presence is unannounced, the director including them, motionless in the background of the shots, blending in with the setting. It’s only when they move that we and the characters become aware of their presence, an approach that’s far more effective than any jump scare.
This method is amplified by Eli Arenson’s cinematography. The already tight interiors become even more confining thanks to his approach of having a light source in the middle of the frame, surrounded by ever-encroaching shadows. What with these spaces perhaps containing a member of the undead, there is seemingly no escape for Eva and her cohorts. The icy blues Arenson captures of the world outside the settlement are no less inviting.
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. Still, conversations regarding the importance of faith and various suggestions about how to appease the god(s) that have seemingly abandoned them, give the story some much-needed narrative heft.
Perhaps the most effective thing about “The Damned” is its ability to transport us to another place. Without the use of computer-generated effects, Palsson takes us to an environment as foreign to most of us as the moon, yet recognizable enough so that we can relate to it. As such, we are as vulnerable as its characters and as susceptible to odd occurrences and folklore as they are.
3 Stars
