It takes a serious talent to carry a film, and after watching The Damned, the new film from Thordur Palsson, it’s clear that Odessa Young is one of those talents.
Starring Odessa Young (The Staircase, Mothering Sunday) and Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders, Gangs of London), The Damned is a tense psychological horror film that follows 19th-century widow, Eva. Tasked with making an impossible choice when a ship sinks off the coast of her isolated fishing outpost during the middle of an especially cruel winter.
With provisions running low, Eva and her close-knit community must choose between rescuing the shipwrecked crew and prioritising their own survival. Facing the consequences of their decision and tormented by guilt, the inhabitants wrestle with a mounting sense of dread and begin to believe they are all being punished for their choices.
I first encountered Odessa Young when I was on set for the making of Paramount+’s The Stand. Young played the role of Fran Goldsmith and nailed it. The young actor held her own alongside talents like James Marsden, Whoopi Goldberg and Alexander Skarsgård. It was extremely exciting to watch her work and it’s great seeing her level up to impressive lead actor in a feature film. She does a fantastic job as the weary and determined Eva.
The Damned itself, shot in Iceland, is unsurprisingly beautiful to look at, with its environment of barren ice, still water, and a cold that permeates every moment. Watching as the men around Eva begin to fall prey to their own paranoia, and maybe something else, it’s easy to be reminded of John Carpenter’s The Thing, another film set in the coldest of climates that deals with isolation and fear. While The Damned doesn’t hit the instant classic or iconic button that The Thing does, I think the comparisons are still warranted and earned.
While The Damned is never particularly horrifying, even with a few well-placed jump scares, where it excels is in two significant places. First, the general sense of unease is a constant, and that’s even before bad things start to happen. The film begins with just two women, Eve and Siobhan Finneran‘s Helga, surrounded by a motley crew of men, all of whom could overpower them in an instance. Are the women safe? Are they respected? As the tension ramps up, those questions are answered, but the unease of the group’s surroundings never does.
The other part of The Damned that’s worth noting is that this is not a long film; it clocks in at just 89 minutes. That means that director Palsson, who came up with the original story, doesn’t waste any time and that The Damned never overstays its welcome. While the ending does leave a little to be desired, with a fairly quick wrap-up that arguably needed more of explanation, it doesn’t negate the story that leads up to it.
Ultimately, The Damned is Odessa Young’s film, and her chilling performance is what makes the movie worth recommending for horror and thriller fans this winter.