Movie Review – The Damned

I went into this film knowing nothing about it other than the description AMC had with the movie. It sounded interesting enough, but sometimes sounding interesting and being interesting are two different things.

Odessa Young plays Eva, a widow living in a remote 19th century Icelandic fishing village. When a ship crashes onto the rocks on the other side of their bay, she chooses not to risk her men to help and they let any survivors perish. As the days pass, their food begins to disappear and they all start to see a malevolent presence who haunts the waking nightmares.

The music is what really gives this film its eerie, melancholic tone. A great soundtrack of violin and strings can really set the mood as it does here. There is never a moment when the music isn’t sending your mind to a dark place, which is great since the characters slowly descend into madness as they cannot trust what they are seeing.

While the cast fully commits and there are a few truly frightening shots, the film does not take the juxtaposition between reality and demonic fantasy quite far enough. They utilize some local folklore which adds to the tone of the film, and I would have liked to see more of that side of things.

Three out of five stars. Some great scares here, but they don’t hold up the movie as a whole.