By Terry Sherwood
To create a feeling of uneasiness as subtle as fingernails on a chalkboard, as directly chilling as an icy blast of air after a shower, is how I found Thordur Palsson’s film The Damned. Exceptionally photographed by Eli Arenson with images the harken back to photos taken of the lunar surface called by one astronaut ‘magnificent desolation. This picture draws upon Icelandic folklore to create a tale of paranoia and superstition.
Set in the 19th century, in a remote fishing village, widow Eva (Odessa Young) oversees her husband’s fishing boat. She keeps control over the craft, which she lends to the town’s rough-and-ready crew. The village is more collection of huts in the snow plus is running low on food. The crew of men get along, singing, drinking and fishing songs by lamps in their makeshift pub, but tensions seem to simmer just beneath this camaraderie and good-natured ribald ribbing has a tone of incendiary malice.
When a wrecked ship on the ice is spotted not far away one morning, the people face the dilemma of whether to spend time and resources on search and rescue. Not subject to maritime law as no distress signal was present and perhaps the moral law of the sea, the debate rages on even to the point of not wanting to light the beacon fires. Oddly valuable food and drink items wash ashore from the wreck, aiding the village. The village decides to venture out on treacherous rocks, where survivors might be stranded, risking being trapped themselves. They find in one of the most effective moments chilling physical forms, rooted and glowing eyes in the shadows in the darkness. These forms desperately fight to climb aboard the craft, and the men desperately beat them back with oars, weapons barely escaping with losses of their own.
Eva, wrought with self-doubt over how best to lead seeks help from Daniel (Joe Cole), yields yet another dilemma of a budding romance. Dead bodies wash up on shore and are placed in boxes not buried because of frost. At night, in the wind, one hears scratching from the boxes. When food is found missing, the fisherman suspects the rising dead. Are the dead harassing the living, taking revenge, or is this simply a madness of isolation? Figures creep in the shadows, building tension that drives them to the edge of insanity only to be silenced by blows of the head. The ending in the ice fog casts doubt on whether the is a supernatural influence
The Damned is an oppressive film filled with static images of ice fields, dark, almost chiaroscuro moments in cabins, and thoughtful, if not over-indulgent, dialogue. The effect is numbing as one sinks into the film world of icy depths and the unknown of perhaps spectral bodies in boxes on a sheet of ice. Bringing to mind such folk horrors set in the old world such as Robert Eggers’ The Witch and another sea-bound story in the TV drama The Terror, you have a brooding psychological experience. A wonderful choral score by Stephan McKeon adds to the authentic look of people marooned, perhaps in their private hell. The effect is chilling. After all, referring to other supernatural creatures,’ the greatest strength is that one does not believe until it is too late.
Bloody Flicks 