★ 7 / 10
<em>'The Damned'</em> sets the tone well and holds
r96sk
'The Damned' sets the tone well and holds solid cast performances, it's a perfectly good movie with a fitting run time of around 90 minutes. There are…
'The Damned' sets the tone well and holds solid cast performances, it's a perfectly good movie with a fitting run time of around 90 minutes. There are naturally issues with it, I do think the plot gets a little repetitive for example, but all in all I liked it enough.
Odessa Young isn't someone I was aware of a few hours ago, though this is a pleasant and noteworthy first experience of her acting capabilities. Siobhan Finneran, another I didn't previously know, is also a plus point. Joe Cole and Rory McCann, much more familiar to me, are good as well.
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★ 7 / 10
dayeambria
I was excited to see this film because I am a horror and Rory McCann fan.Overall, I enjoyed the movie for what it was. I have a particular preference towards…
I was excited to see this film because I am a horror and Rory McCann fan.Overall, I enjoyed the movie for what it was. I have a particular preference towards supernatural horror, so if you do too, you may like this as well. It is also a psychological horror. If you read the other reviews, they mentioned that it was pretty good up until the end and that it was too slow of a burn.I disagree that it was too slow. The pacing was on par, in my opinion, for it being just an hour and a half length movie. What I do agree with is that the ending stopped this from being great.When I read others' reviews, they were vague on what made the ending so bad, so I was curious about it before I watched. Without spoiling it, I believe the direction that the plot went was a cop-out or a rushed way to wrap up the the story. I left the movies trying to justify the ending in a way where it could have made sense because I really enjoyed the rest of the film. Again, trying not to spoil it, the ending seemed a bit illogical (despite it being supernatural and psychological) and gives partial clarification to the plot points. Especially for those who found this to be slow, it does not give a good pay off for watching.I still don't feel like it was a waste of time, however. I rated it a bit higher and still think its worth a watch because that particular ending happened within about the last 3 minutes of the movie, so essentially, an hour and 26 min was still good and therefore not a waste.I also rated it a bit higher because the other parts of the film: the cinematography, costume design and sound design were really great. Especially for a horror film, the things you don't initially think about, like eerie sounds, can make or break the atmosphere and this movie did it right in setting the atmosphere during the entire run time.
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★ 6 / 10
A damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don't dilemma
filmephile
The film is very atmospheric, filled with dread, frigidness, and quite unsettling. It follows a crew on a coastal Icelandic fishing outpost that comes across…
The film is very atmospheric, filled with dread, frigidness, and quite unsettling. It follows a crew on a coastal Icelandic fishing outpost that comes across another shipwrecked crew. They face a damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don't scenario (no pun intended); saving this crew would mean jeopardizing their own safety, but not saving the other crew would be morally wrong. The decision they make haunts them.The cinematography is very nice, highlighting the Icelandic wintry landscapes, and the sound design is effective. While watching, it feels like you're actually there at the outpost with the characters in the dead of winter.Odessa Young is great as the lead not only of the film itself, but also of the crew within the film. She's quietly and subtly bold as a widow coming to grips with leading an all-male crew of the coastal fishing outpost inherited from her late husband. Young has good presence here as we follow her going through something sinister that she's in over her head to understand, balancing the terror she's experiencing while also trying to remain a competent leader for her crew. The rest of the ensemble is good too, particularly Cole and Finneran. You really feel the group's esprit de corps and camaderie, which really adds to the film as we see a sinister presence proceed to wreak havoc.While the story itself is compelling, the film has one issue, and it's a big one: the pacing; which is odd to say since the film is actually not very long, at just 1 hr 29 mins. In large part this is because the film takes place entirely in one small location and it follows the lead primarily, while the other characters are on the sidelines. At the same time, this seclusion adds greatly to the film's atmosphere. So perhaps while many may find this film to be glacial in its pace at times, others very well may appreciate it and take the film to be a slow burn, or a slow thaw, no pun intended.But however you take this film, it is certainly worth checking out, if only for the great acting and isolating, cold atmosphere.
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64%
TOMATOMETER
· 28 reviews
64%
AUDIENCE
5.7/10
10.1K
•••
Ignore the monkeys hating on it, this was EXCELLENT! And the scenery was fantastic!