Despite the 19th-century setting, there are distinct echoes of The Thing in this chilly horror. Working from an elegantly minimal script by Jamie Hannigan (who also wrote Pilgrimage), the Icelandic director Thordur Palsson, an alumnus of Netflix’s The Valhalla Murders, makes a striking Nordic debut with The Damned.
Snowbound and reduced to eating the reserves for bait, Eva (Odessa Young) and her salty fishing crew have resigned themselves to a hungry winter when they spot a foundering ship on the horizon. The jagged, imposing rocks around the island trap the audibly desperate survivors, leaving Eva, who has inherited the remote fishing station from her drowned husband, to make a terrible decision. The nearest settlement is three tough days away. They can either assist the moored wretches or save their meagre rations.
Strange occurrences ensue.
Provisions and brandy wash ashore only to mysteriously disappear. Sea shanties and jolly ribbing give way to folkloric gloom. The inhabitants of the fishing station seem to lose their reason and turn on one another. Siobhan Finneran’s witchy cook Helga warns Eva that a draugr – an insatiable undead monster – is stalking the settlement. She relays a similarly spooky tale about a man who murdered his brother to steal his beautiful wife and house only for the victim’s spectre to exact revenge.
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The final reveal is as unnecessary as it is predictable, and the pace can be as glacial as the setting.
No matter. The Damned is powered along by suspicion, atmospherics and an unforgettable landscape. Young is a capable final girl, her fierceness tempered only by the hint of repressed romance with boatswain Daniel (Joe Cole). Eli Arenson’s camera picks out imposing shapes in the day and ominous shadows at night. Stephen McKeon’s piercing strings are appropriately disconcerting.
The Damned is in cinemas from Friday, January 10th
