Movie Night: The Damned (2025)

In “The Damned”, a 19th-century Icelandic fishing station becomes the backdrop for a haunting tale of moral choices and creeping terror.

When the cinematic dumping ground instead becomes fertile ground for artful chillers like The Damned, you know we’re in for a stellar year of horror.

Opening on a desolate, snow-covered landscape, a woman is trekking through a snowstorm. Her voiceover cues us into the bleakness of survival amidst harsh conditions and scarce resources. The woman is Eva (a captivating Odessa Young), who owns a remote, 19th-century Icelandic fishing station. Eva now bears the responsibility for running the station alone following the death of her husband in a fishing accident.

During the brutal winter fishing season, several fishermen live in the station, separated from their families for months, facing tests of their mental and physical endurance.

We’re introduced to Eva and her crew on Midwinter’s Night, also known as the Longest Night. During a toast over dinner, Eva remarks, “As of today, each day will be longer than the one before it,” which is meant in both a literal and a metaphorical way.

Soon after, Eva is forced to make an impossible choice when a stranded boat is spotted off the shore of her land. Though these doomed fishermen will surely freeze to death in the icy waters if not rescued, Eva can’t risk being responsible for more mouths to feed; the limited food supply is already barely sustaining them.

In short order, one devastating choice leads to another, and the tragic loss of life weighs heavily on the hearts and minds of Eva and her men.

Superstitious beliefs about the vengeful, corporeal spirits of Old Norse mythology called Draugr amplify the mounting dread that their painful choices will have even more painful consequences.

First-time director Thordur Palsson, working from a script he co-wrote with Jamie Hannigan, demonstrates a keen eye for atmospheric immersion and a masterful understanding of creeping terror.

The first thing you’ll be struck by is how jaw-droppingly gorgeous the film is.

Filmed on location in Iceland, the setting alone makes the viewing experience extraordinary. That natural combination of beauty and bleakness is enhanced by the skillful way cinematographer Eli Arenson (Lamb) frames the unforgiving landscape—from the icy blue skies to the frigid black sea, set against a blanket of blinding white snow. It’s as mesmerizing as it is foreboding.

Along with the stunning cinematography, there are some truly unnerving and affecting visuals that crawl under the skin. It’s never overtly gory or over-the-top in its scare tactics, but more than a few moments are positively dread-inducing.

Meanwhile, the ominous score from composer Stephen McKeon dramatically heightens the tension.

As for the cast, Young as Eva is the heart and soul of the film. She gives a powerful performance as a grieving widow consumed by loneliness, racked with guilt, and crippled by escalating terror.

The ensemble cast is uniformly capable, with standout performances from a sensitive and tragic Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders) and a gruff and imposing Rory McCann (best known to Game of Thrones fans as The Hound).

Though the film is a lean 90 minutes, Palsson gives the story plenty of room to breathe, allowing the guilt-stricken madness to slowly take hold in a way that intensifies the psychological horror.

The Damned blends elements of gothic and folk horror with the treacherous isolation and paranoid terror of John Carpenter’s The Thing—echoing that film’s masterclass in balancing the grotesque with the unpredictable, leaving both the characters and viewers questioning what is real.

Like The Thing, The Damned combines its haunting score and stark setting to amplify feelings of vulnerability and madness.

Ultimately, The Damned is a haunting morality tale about guilt, self-preservation versus self-sacrifice, and the often-crushing weight of our decisions.

Yet, morality is never as black and white as we think, especially when our very survival hangs in the balance. This is a searing film about the wages of sin and the way we so often become damned by a hell of our own making.

It’s also an atmospheric slow burn of a film, so if that’s not your thing, The Damned may not be your cup of ice-cold tea.

However, if you enjoy dread-inducing tales of psychological terror and the kinds of films that make you shiver through the screen, there’s plenty to love about this breathtaking chiller.