The Damned (2024 film)

Gather around the fire for a knock at the door...

The first horror film I have watched of the year, The Damned is one of those movies I appreciated even if I did not particularly enjoy it. I’ll explain.

The film takes place during the 19th century at a fishing outpost in the arctic and, due to unfortunate circumstances, things get desperate and, finally, spiral out of control resulting in many deaths.

Without getting into the story as most reviews do, I’ll just talk about what I liked and appreciated, as well as what I didn’t like.

What the movie is about, to me, is how folktales shape the people who tell them, and listen to them. When the moviegoers meet the characters, they are singing a bawdy drinking song. Then it transitions to a campfire tale of terror, and back to song, and a little dancing.

This is how they entertain themselves; with tales of supernatural happenings and curses and ritual rites.

And that is what I appreciated about the film: it showed how the folktales and superstitions shaped the people who believed in such things to take drastic actions such as building a cross that overlooks the camp to the point someone falls; to bury the found dead people with the proper rites and bindings so their bodies couldn’t rise; to adorn the wood and doors with charms and symbols so that the draugr cannot pass. The Damned showed, too, how folktales can be used to explain madness caused by cabin fever; the lack of harvest; the fate of the crew who attempted to cross dangerous waters. It, too, showed how folktales can be used to cover up guilt when making a terrible mistake – people would rather believe the supernatural version rather than an actual crime.

What I did not like was some of the choices made for editing. There were many points when the movie focused too long on some scenes, and others where the film jumps far too ahead leaving little gaps of missing information like absent breadcrumbs.

I would recommend the movie to show how folktales, folk-remedies, and superstitions can shape a group of people into a sort of mass hysteria. There are a lot of movies that explore the notion of group paranoia, but without getting into the territories of spoilers (stay away from the Plot section of the Wikipedia article), this movie does it a little differently. And that difference is what I appreciated.