This New Horror With 90% on RT Is the Most Impressive Debut in Recent Years
A leisurely story that will leave you devastated by its ending.
On Amazon Channel you can find the directorial debut of Thordur Palsson about the clash of a progressive-minded fishing station owner with deep-rooted prejudices and ancient legends.
This is an impressive horror work that fans of the genre should not miss.
What Is The Damned About?
Eva runs the station where the fishermen are based during the winter shift: a few houses by the sea and a cemetery where the woman's husband has found his last refuge.
One day, the team notices a sinking ship in the distance that has run aground on dangerous rocks. Eva refuses to send a boat to the wreck, citing a lack of supplies and concern for the fishermen.
When a barrel of salted beef washes up on shore the next day, apparently stored in the hold of the sunken ship, the men go to see if there are any more supplies in the rocks.
Instead, the sailors find several surviving Basques, who rush madly into the boat, nearly drowning the entire crew. In the ensuing chaos, the helmsman dies, and his assistant kills one of the people who climbed into the boat.
The depressed mood of the crew worsens the next morning when the lifeless bodies of the ill-fated ship's crew are found on the shore. A new batch of coffins appears in the cemetery, and Eva's superstitious assistant begins to frighten the crew with stories of the living dead – draugrs.
The Damned Masterfully Subverts Audience Expectations
The Damned plays with the audience's expectations. The trailer and the first information about the movie promise a story in the spirit of The Thing. And at first, the events do unfold in a completely predictable way.
But where a jumpscare is expected, the director turns it into a joke and cleverly leads the audience on a false trail.
The plot of The Damned unravels extremely slowly, and only at the end does the realization strike like lightning: every action of the characters has been carefully planned and arranged for the sake of a devastating finale.
The Damned Is One of the Most Impressive Debuts in the Horror Genre
The Damned is a great example of a debut film in which ambition and an understanding of one's own limitations coexist harmoniously.
Using the familiar The Thing template, Thordur Palsson skillfully hooked the audience and then sat them down to listen to an instructive story about how guilt, isolation and prejudice can turn even the most decent people into madmen.