The cliche is drama is easy, comedy is hard. But let’s not overlook the difficulty of horror, a genre that can often swing from hauntingly great to comically bad. In the case of The Damned, a less exaggerated example of that swing came within the movie’s runtime, as I was on board with just about everything until the final moments of the movie that, while not ruining the experience, left me unsatisfied.
The Damned is directed by Thordur Palsson, an Icelandic filmmaker making his directing debut with the 2025 new movie. The story (from Palsson with a script written by Jamie Hannigan) takes place in 19th century Iceland, where a widow leads a fishing crew during a harsh winter. When they make the difficult decision not to rescue men whose ship sinks just beyond their bay, they soon realize their decision may come back to haunt them (literally). Odessa Young leads the ensemble that also features Joe Cole, Lewis Gribben, Francis Magee, Turlough Convery, Mícheál Óg Lane, Siobhan Finneran and Rory McCann.
