By Ezra Haber Glenn

The Damned is a perfect little ice-cold January horror gem blending historical, psychological, and folk chills into a bleak midwinter’s tale to keep you up through the longest nights of the year.

The Damned, directed by Thordur Palsson. Screening at AMC Boston Common.

Odessa Young in scene from The Damned.

Robert Eggers’ art-house Nosferatu is topping both box-office charts and award short-lists, so it’s a good time to take a closer look at what’s going on in the world of horror, a too-often-disregarded genre that is capable of supplying so much more than just jump-scares and gore-fests. Remember, horror is among the original forms of narrative fiction (along with “romance” and “epic/quest”). Long before Friday the 13^th or Scream VI spine-tingling campfire stories and seriously grim fairy tales served as outlets for our deepest fears, cautionary fables to warn and ward us through an uncertain world.

The last few years have been especially rich in this field, with highlights coming from the more artistic (and often-blended) subgenres of historical horror, psychological horror, and folk horror. Kicking off the new year with a strong start is Thordur Palsson’s The Damned, a perfect little ice-cold January horror gem blending all three into a bleak midwinter’s tale to keep you up through the longest nights of the year.

Based on a loose amalgam of old folk tales and historical tragedy, the story takes place in a remote 19^th century Icelandic fishing station where a small band of intrepid fishermen have hunkered down, closed in for the winter. Their prospects have not been great: it’s late December and they have barely enough food to take them through the harsh winter months ahead of them – and that’s assuming they make the questionable choice of eating what they’ve saved for bait. Their hopes of catching enough fish to survive — never mind actually make a profit on the season — are running on fumes at this point, held together by sheer desperation and a strange futility-fueled optimism by their growling helmsman Ragnar (Rory McCann, known for his portrayal of “The Hound” in Game of Thrones, so we can rest assured that he’s plenty familiar with bleak wintery settings).

Counterbalancing Ragnar is the pragmatic and level-headed owner of the expedition, Eva Magnusson (Odessa Young), a young widow who is managing the fishing stake after the death of her husband (the previous helmsman). A handful of seaman (grizzled salts, fresh-faced recruits) round out the crew, along with a superstitious and wizened charwoman named Helga (Siobhan Finneran).

Ragnar may lead the men at sea, but it’s Eva’s boat, and it’ll be her call to decide how the expedition will survive the winter. This responsibility presses on her as she weighs each crucial decision: when to trim the rations, when to launch the boats, when to let the boys blow off steam for the night. Constant reminders of disaster — dozens of little graves — dot the unforgiving beachhead. The camp is literally surrounded by death.

The plot moves forward from survival to moral quandary early in the first act. The crew spots a small craft foundering on “The Teeth,” a foreboding craggy spit off the coast. Without any assistance, all hands aboard will surely die – shredded by the rocks and surf, frozen raw by the arctic cold. But a rescue attempt would be highly dangerous and foolhardy. Knowing all too well what happens to sailors abandoned to the sea, Eva nonetheless steels herself and orders her men to stand-down. They cannot risk their own lives, nor take on the additional burden of feeding survivors from their already insufficient and dwindling reserves.

Further complicating matters, upon finding a barrel of salted pork from the wreckage that afternoon, Eva reverses course and decides to launch a hurried rescue, eager to salvage the ship’s supplies while still letting its men perish.

In a recent interview Palsson makes the connection between this plot and an actual episode in Icelandic history:

[T]here actually was a ship that sank off the shores of Iceland with the people from the Basque region. In real history, they were able to swim to shore, but when they got to shore, the poor farmers and the people that were trying to survive … decided that they wanted the food and [supplies] they had on the ship, so they decided to kill all the Basque people.

Morning arrives and the bodies wash ashore. Eva and her crew slide into uncomfortable survivalist gray areas — cowardice, self-preservation, altruism, and prudence — haunted by the choices they’ve made and the tradeoffs they’re willing to accept.

In order to earn the film its legit horror cred, the “haunting” moves from figurative to literal in the form of a draugur, an old Norse folk-monster (Helga conveniently explains the  legend). Unless proper precautions are taken, the restless bodies of the dead will curse the minds and bodies of the living, transformed into violent creatures, driven by anger to take revenge.

It’s a powerful hook: a bit hokey, of course, but with strong moral implications. Rather than a murderous force of nature or an evil demon from beyond, the monster here is one of our own creation, born out of our own fear, fed on our selfish actions. The narrative is propelled by a Newtonian principle of psychological karma. When you begin to build a wall and pull up the drawbridge, everyone starts to look like an invader. (Shades of Pogo’s “we have met the enemy, and he is us.”)

The setting makes for an effective fit for these themes. Many horror films are set in isolated, remote outposts for the sake of simple plot contrivance, but The Damned‘s rugged coast is no bland cabin in the woods or USCSS Nostromo. The landscape is both bleak and beautiful, a naturally conducive backdrop for the close, internalized terror that comes when we confront our sins and shortcomings.

The film would benefit from a slightly longer runtime, to provide more opportunities to build suspense, to develop its characters, to cement the camaraderie before the despair sets in, and, ideally, to explore the area’s stunning and atmospheric landscapes. Two characters in particular – Helga, the folk-witch charwoman, and Jonas, a Christian sailor who blames superstition, lack of faith, and the devil for their mounting misfortunes – would be worth more attention.

To its credit, The Damned presents a vulnerable and scared — yet still tough — woman surrounded by drunk, frightened, rough, and often violent men, without feeling the need to exploit sexual violence to raise the dramatic tension. Survival gives these folks more than enough to worry about. Young’s Eva attains a cautious, thoughtful balance between vulnerability and stoicism: this is a strong, independent, sturdy woman who can both manage and care for men without falling into simplistic sexist tropes.

Note: Be sure you don’t confuse Palsson’s The Damned with the 2024 historical war thriller of the same name, directed by Roberto Minervini.

Ezra Haber Glenn is a Lecturer in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies & Planning, where he teaches a special subject on “The City in Film.” His essays, criticism, and reviews have been published in the Arts Fuse, CityLab, the Journal of the American Planning Association, Bright Lights Film Journal, WBUR’s ARTery, Experience Magazine, the New York Observer, and Next City. He is the regular film reviewer for Planning magazine, and member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. Follow him here.