The Damned

The Damned is powered along by suspicion, atmospherics and an unforgettable landscape. Young is a capable final girl, her fierceness tempered only by the hint of repressed romance.

What may have been intended as a chilling revelation, serves only as a reminder (one becoming increasingly frequent) that audiences are no longer to be trusted with the slightest inference.

But if you invest in its characters, it offers a thought-provoking insight into the depths of the human mind when faced with the laws of survival. It’s grim, but good.

What Palsson is really tackling here is that intersection between the real and the arcane.

A slow-burning work of psychological horror that’s more interested in exploring humanity’s capacity for guilt than jump scares or gore.

“The Damned” is in no rush about revealing its horrors, and that works in its favor when Palsson unleashes the madness in the third act.

Young's commanding performance is most effective when the pic stays the course without becoming repetitive.

The Damned may test your patience with its languid pace and propensity for things-that-go-boo cliches. Palsson emphasizes atmosphere over action, but doesn’t give his characters much of interest to do within those atmospherics.

When gimmicks and jump scares have become the mainstream horror norm, a little 19th century spookery is just what the bloodletter ordered.

A moody moral fable with more than enough spooky flair to spare, The Damned is an ethical dilemma about the inherent ickiness of survival at the cost of sacrificing other humans.