Winter, Choices, and Haunting Echoes
Picture a weathered fishing village on the cusp of ice and open sea, shivering as the wind laces your bones with burnt salt and mist. This is the world of The Damned, one of the coldest folk horror films of the 19th century. Where morality is tested, and survival is a burden. The central character is Eva, a young widow played by Odessa Young, who inherits her late husband’s fishing station and guides her people through famine, fear, and faith.
When a foreign ship runs aground and Eva must choose between saving the shipwrecked and risking her people’s starvation, or letting them drown in the cold. That decision stirs guilt and paranoia, and something primal and malignant hidden just below the surface. Something cold and otherworldly.
Food shortages cause tempers to flare, and soon the line separating man from monster becomes blurred. In Eva’s people, there are curses, and whispers about ghosts and retribution. There are shadows that move even when there is no one there. With the final haunting moments of the film, Eva understands that the real curse may not be in the myths, but in the choices she has made.
The story of The Damned may seem to be told from a distant perspective. 19th- century Icelandic shores and ice cold Icelandic seas are the geographical and temporal distances, but the questions asked are truly timeless. What would you sacrifice to survive and how much guilt can a conscience bear before it crumbles and cracks?
From Australia to Iceland: Odessa’s Long Winter.
To understand Eva’s loneliness, one must first understand the woman who brought her to life. Odessa Young, the Australian actress who leads The Damned, has her own story of early success, self doubt, and quiet courage.
Coming from a creative family, Odessa grew up surrounded by a loving atmosphere filled with music and literature. She started acting at the age of eleven and made the decision to dedicate her whole life to it by her early teen years. At seventeen, Odessa starred in The Daughter, a role that won her one of Australia’s leading acting awards and recognition that most only dream of. However, with success, came the price of isolation.
On her eighteenth birthday, Odessa left home to pursue acting, and for the first time, she was entirely on her own; chasing the uncertainty of an international career and the deep-seated longing for family and home. Homesickness, and her feeling of losing her place within the acting community, paired with the relentlessness of reinvention an actor must endure to ‘make it’ in Hollywood, all deeply impacted her.
This solitude is palpable in the character of Eva – a woman who must stand firm for her people when she is trembling inside. The Icelandic winter landscape was more than just a backdrop; it reflected Eva’s inner state of exhaustion. The long hours of shooting, the bitter cold, and the isolation all combined to deeply enrich Odessa’s performance.
Odessa once remarked how she cherished roles where women could be strong yet fragiles. With The Damned, she found exactly that. Her Eva isn’t a horror cliché. She’s a leader, a mourner, a sinner, and a reminder that survival can erode humanity.
Joe Cole and the Weight of Silence
Opposite her is Joe Cole, playing Daníel, one of the fishermen whose loyalty and conscience get challenged as the story darkens. Daníel is quiet, observant, and profoundly human as he is forced to become a sort of a moral compass, one described in the script as “torn between empathy and fear.”
The journey that Joe Cole followed to reach this particular role feels almost poetic. He was born in Kingston upon Thames and is the oldest of five brothers, one of them actor Finn Cole. Joe came from a modest background and breathed in the struggle of theatre, odd jobs, and minor television roles before he gained recognition as the fiery John Shelby in Peaky Blinders.
Rather than pursuing glamor, Joe sought out roles that capture and contend with the shadows. His award-winning performance in A Prayer Before Dawn, where he played a British boxer imprisoned in Thailand, required the kind of brutal honesty and vulnerability that shadows one’s spirit. That flame of authentic spirit burns brightly in his performance in The Damned as well.
On the set he reportedly prepared for his role by contemplating the psychological disintegration of his character and letting the isolation and the cold sink deep into his bones. He does not emote fear. It simmers under the surface and vibrates quietly, a kind of performance that lingers long after the lights go up.
When the Reel Echoes the Real
The Damned is powerful, not only because of its chilling folklore and scares, but because of its powerful depiction of the human condition. Eva’s guilt and hallucinations capture the true inner world of the artist, who grapples with perfection, and the weight of every decision.
Odessa Young’s real-life courage, in leaving home, facing rejection, and carving out her place in a very competitive world, serves as the emotional core of Eva’s resolve. Joe Cole’s perseverance through struggles and pursuit of emotional truth define Daníel’s quiet torment.
Without a reliance on special effects, the crew focused on the atmosphere. Much of the “horror” in the film derives from real, lived discomfort, like the aching wind, the damp clothing, and the interminable nights. During the shoot, cast members lived in nearly isolated proximity, which facilitated real-life bonds—and tensions— that mirrored the disintegrating cohesion of their characters.
Even the myth of the draugr—the revenant that rises from a grave and takes its place in the watery depths— carries a heavier connotation. It speaks of memory, the ghosts of the past that linger. It speaks of suppressed guilt, the torment that rises over and over, yearning to be addressed.
Echoes That Cross Oceans
Even though The Damned is based in Iceland, its core universal. The pull between compassion and survival, and the fear of making the wrong choice, are universal truths, felt and experienced across all societies.
An emotion-laden narrative drawn from moral dilemmas provides Indian audiences sympathy and emotional engagement. Women bearing the moral weight of their world, and standing alone, evokes images of such heroines. Iceland might invoke cold, but most audiences would understand the chilling isolation.
While the film’s meticulous, lyrical, stunning, and haunting visuals were appreciated, it was the emotional core and fascination of deep haunting feelings of regret and the “what ifs” that lingered most.
Final Shiver
Odessa Young’s performance, and the emotional turmoil she embodies, and Daníel’s despair, wrapped in the earthy realism of Joe Cole, transform The Damned from just a horror film, into a reflective piece. It leaves haunting the aching humanity after the dread.
The haunting may be frightening, but the real fear lies in the remorseful, irreversible decisions, the condemning, the unrelenting specter of guilt, and in the last, despairing moment, the unwhispered recognition that the living can be more damned than the dead as Eva looks into the dark, unforgiving sea.
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