If you ask me, they were damned long before they made any moral choices. You choose to starve in the bitter Arctic cold and, well, you get what you get. This set-up is more like a penal colony than a fishing village.
The place is unspecified. But it’s bitter cold and arctic; we know that much. This is a place where even Icelanders (like writer/director Thordur Palsson) think, “You gotta be crazy to live there.” This is a land where there have to be dragons, right? Because otherwise, what’s the point?
The year is ~ 1870. The fishing operation is run by recent widow and lone Arctic young woman Eva (Odessa Young). Picture this: it is sub-freezing cold. People are starving (although you’d never know). There are, maybe, a dozen people living in four or five wood houses. This is the entire village. At night, the houses huddle for heat. The residents drink their dinners and sing their songs. Who knows where they get alcohol. During the day, they fish. Do all of them have scurvy? I can’t imagine fruit or vegetables growing in this wasteland. The fully-grown beefy fishingmen all defer to the one woman in charge and, yet, despite the lack of fortune, there isn’t a trace of misogyny, sexism, or even a rape-y vibe coming from this place. Score one for 19th century feminism.
Or maybe that just isn’t the story Thordur Palsson wanted to tell.
On the ugly day in question, the village collectively espy a small ship failing outside the cove. The cries are faint, but distinct; the crew are in trouble. Citing danger and resource issues, Eva decides not to help.
The men follow suit.
They’re not damned yet. This is a callous, but reasonable call, given the circumstances. The fishing is down; the village is starving. Twenty more bodies alive in this place isn’t going to help that. However, when the crew find a meat-filled barrel washed up to shore, suddenly it’s go time.
Oh, so when there are potential resources available, suddenly lives are expendable, huh?
And that’s exactly what happens. Lives become expendable when the longboat sent finds not more barrels, but the entirety of the shipwrecked crew hanging out on a rock. The longboat fishermen literally fight to drown instead of rescue.
OK, now you’re The Damned.
Naturally, the ghost stories hinted at in Act I come to life in Act II. Horror is always better with confined 
geography, and that’s exactly what we’ve got here – small island; escape is suicide. So when there are creepy images, mysterious theft, random bodies, and no place to go? Well … you got yourselves an old-fashioned fright fest.
The Damned is a morose film. Like I said above, I think these guys were gonna have a bad winter long before fate arrived. And now that it has, life goes from awful to unbearable. It’s hard to like a picture when there is so little to like on screen. However, I cannot deny the quality elements of horror, drama, and mystery in this story, hence I’m not damning The Damned, in fact I’ll be damned I’m gonna damn The Damned. The Damned is a damn sight better than the undamned, dammit. I’ll be damned.
- Some fishermen out in the cold
Made a move strong, callous, and bold
Did their uncharitable weight
Seal a grave fate?
Or were their souls a commodity to be sold?
Rated R, 89 Minutes
Director: Thordur Palsson
Writer: Jamie Hannigan, Thordur Palsson
Genre: Games you play in the cold
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Superstitious fishermen
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Superstitious fishermen
