The Damned

Reviewer: John Morrow

VOD | January 10, 2025

Ah, genuine folk horror - there’s nowt like it and it’s always a refreshing delight when one stumbles across an entry that digs deep into its premise and COMMITS. We’ve seen it with the likes of The VVitch, Kill List, and Midsommar in recent years, where the viewer is drawn into a world so completely that the shocks and dread are simply that much more effective.

The Damned, an international production filmed in Iceland and set in the 19th century, is stacked with supernatural folklore and morality tests, and, for the most part, takes us places we would normally never want to find ourselves.

Fighting for survival at an isolated fishing outpost, Eva, the widowed manager, and her crew are seemingly cursed after making the choice to not help a sinking ship off the coast. Facing the consequences, a darkness consumes them all, creating chaos and death at every turn. Is it human revenge, otherworldly evil, or sheer guilt, starvation, and madness?

Let’s get one thing out of the way, and it’ll probably be a stumbling block for some - this is a mood piece that stews in its own atmosphere and that takes time to build, but it will immediately be labelled as a slow burn in this year of our lord 2025 (a descriptor that I avidly do NOT consider to be negative) and if that ain’t your jam, ya may as well move on now.

For those remaining who do delight in dread and atmosphere, there’s a LOT here to enjoy within the confines of this claustrophobic small village setting. The performances are all top notch, the cinematography is BEAUTIFUL and yet ominous at all times, the set pieces are truly exceptional, and the score by Stephen McKeon is perhaps the true star of the show - reminiscent of hugely dramatic, impactful music like that of The Shining and Midsommar, quiet moments here are made that much more dreadful, exciting moments that much more heart racing, and shocking moments that much more terrifying by McKeon. It’s a wonder to behold, and I’m off to find the soundtrack immediately once I’m done here.

It’s not all sweet summer wine and roses though - there is little character development or any real arcs to speak of (which is odd with the morality play, but does add to the melancholic isolation), and the ending is somewhat expected and perhaps a little too “A-HA!!” for me to be completely jaw-dropped, but these are actually minor niggles that don’t really affect the importance of what The Damned is attempting - pure, growing dread and overwhelming dark and creepy atmosphere - and in that, the film totally succeeds.

As previously mentioned, it’s not for everybody, but the target audience (you know who you are) will revel in the classy, terrible world created by Thordur Palsson and his crew, and I had a BALL immersed in its icy, folky grip.

7/10

Director: Thordur Palsson
Release Year: 2025
Trailer: Watch on YouTube

The Girl with the Needle

Reviewer: John Morrow

MUBI | January 10, 2025

Oh, you’re looking for a film packed with proper triggers! I didn’t know! Well, do I have a cracker for you!

‘The Girl With The Needle’ is a Danish / Polish / Swedish historical psychological horror drama (phew!) set in 1919 and loosely based around the true story of Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye, a grim, absolutely evil tale that writers Magnus Van Horn (also the director) and Line Langebek have put their own spin on, and it’s one that I truly, sickeningly admire.

Karoline, a young factory worker whose husband is believed to have died in the raging Great War, struggles to survive. When she becomes pregnant, she meets Dagmar, a charismatic woman who runs an underground adoption agency through the front of a delicatessen. Karoline accepts a role as a wet nurse alongside her to repay a debt, but soon becomes suspicious of what is really going on, and boy, do hijinks ensue.

Let’s get one thing straight - this isn’t your standard mainstream horror film, in fact it’s more of an expressionist-lathered painting that contains many horrific situations and atrocities, as if Tod Browning and David Lynch decided to collaborate and get dirty. It’s an arthouse movie by any other name, and it’s also one of the most harrowing and dreadful pictures that I’ve seen in ages.

Both Vic Carmen Sonne as Karoline and Trine Dryholm as Dagmar are STELLAR and mesmerising in their respective roles, but the whole cast really embody the social skeleton of post-war Denmark, as if we’re watching ghosts on fragile old film. The cinematography is (as previously mentioned) quite reminiscent of the expressionist era, lighting folks from below to almost give them classic monster-like appearances, but it’s all drowned in unrelenting poverty and filth and degradation and melancholy, all raised to fever pitch by the consistent and penetratingly unnerving score of Frederikke Hoffmeier, one that will surely haunt your dreams for weeks afterwards.

There are so many disturbing images and sounds contained within that I’m quite surprised that there hasn’t been more furor over it in the press, but I’m absolutely pleased that it exists in its current, brutal state. It’s almost beautiful in its requisite ugliness, sadness, and hardness of an all too real world in turmoil, and there’s a terrifying surreality to it too.

All I know is, being mindful of the true story from the outset stuck with me throughout the viewing, and made it that much more icky and real and horrifying to behold. It’s an unpleasant watch that seems to drag the viewer from grim setting to grim setting without so much as a chance to take a breath, and I was truly drained and depleted by the time the credits rolled. It’s probably not something that I will ever want to experience again, but goddamn, it’s an INCREDIBLE film and one that should be experienced by as many as can possibly digest it.

A masterpiece of Grand Guignol gothic arthouse cinema, and a forerunner in the race for best films of the year very early on.

9/10

PS: and yes, it’s in black-and-white and Danish with subtitles. Deal with it.

Director: Magnus Von Horn
Release Year: 2024
Trailer: Watch on YouTube