Voyage of The Damned

Movie studios have long considered the first weekend of the new year a fruitful dumping ground for abysmal horror movies hoping to carve out a profitable niche by imitating their betters. But director Thordur Palsson may well break that cycle with his new film The Damned—a slice of Victorian Era folk horror set in a remote Icelandic fishing village. Starring Australian actress Odessa Young (Assassination Nation, Mothering Sunday, Shirley), the film follows Eva, the young widowed wife of the village’s leader, who faces the choice of rescuing a group of interlopers from a shipwreck or losing more of her own men in the waters that took her husband’s life. In the aftermath of this Hobson’s choice, an unrepentant evil begins to wreak havoc on her close-knit community.

Though The Damned owes a debt to body horror classics like John Carpenter’s The Thing as well as haunted landscape movies like The Others and Picnic on Hanging Rock, Palsson infuses the film with the folklore that kept him up at night during his childhood in Iceland. What results is not only a singular horror film that could rival any A24 or Neon release, but also an impressive study of collective guilt and the cost of leadership. 

Palsson and Young sat down with The Pamphleteer to talk about recreating history, the perils of shooting in extreme environments, and crafting stories that speak to international audiences. 

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Thordur Palsson

Why do you think that folk horror is such a staple of the horror genre today that consistently appeals to people across the world?

It's from a simpler time–different rules, no cell phones. It’s more difficult to get away from your problems. For me, what I love about the period setting is the lack of technology– being able to tell a story that can wrestle with big questions in this seemingly simple time. When you're developing modern stories, you have to think about cell phones, computers. If it's anything to do with crime, you suddenly start talking about CCTV. 

I think by making something period, it’s more interesting world-building. We try to keep as close to reality as we can with the production design, the costumes, the setting, everything. Obviously, it is a genre piece, but that is a very important element to being able to ask interesting questions and then do this world-building.

This is a film that's very much based on the Icelandic culture you’ve known all your life, but you're also working with Screen Ireland and UK production companies, so it's really a global production. How do you navigate the tensions of being a filmmaker who is making a project about Icelandic culture from inside that culture while also trying to make regional work that resonates within a globalized marketplace?

You wouldn't believe how similar Ireland and Iceland are. A lot of our ancestors came from Vikings, taking a couple of people from Ireland and taking them over here and making them their wives. There's all kinds of interesting connections. We were also under the thumb of Denmark, and they were under the thumb of England. There’s a lot of interesting similarities, and navigating that all came down to the story and the script and the questions we wanted to put forth within it. 

It is a genre piece, but the team wanted to ask certain questions about how the film’s characters are faced with certain choices. Do I save innocent foreigners drowning in the ocean, or do I think about my own people? And that was kind of a guiding light through this genre piece. 

You speak about the film as a genre piece, but the movie The Damned reminded me the most of, both in terms of the composition and its discussion of complicated moral codes, is Jane Campion’s The Piano. What really elevates your movie above a typical ghost story is that these aren't bad people. These are people who are making decisions to survive, but there is still this overwhelming guilt. Can you talk about that nuance a little bit?

It’s interesting you said The Piano because I watched it while I was shooting the film. For me, it all came down to the main character. Eva has to make the choice about what to do in this situation. I love certain, what I could call rules, and the whole film had to be seen through Eva's eyes. So that always meant I had to shoot from her perspective. I never cut away to another character's perspective. 

So, I am playing in the realm of psychological horror, because I might actually ask a couple of questions of an unreliable narrator. The horror elements had to come from character. They had to come from the inciting incident of this horrible event, these people making a choice of thinking about themselves over innocent people, and, thus, the guilt starts to eat them from inside. 

You just touched on this, but I wanted to ask you about the visual grammar of the film. It's some of the best cinematography that I've seen all year. It's not showy, but it's just so confident. How did you and the cinematographer [Eli Arenson] develop the visual language of the film?

I first saw Eli's work when he shot A24’s Lamb, which was fantastic. He likes to paint a picture. He wants to show you a photograph, and I love to move the camera–a bit of  Spielberg. I love to feel movement, but obviously, it has to be motivated. So it was constantly us asking, “Are we still in this moment? Are we moving?” It always came down to what Eva was doing. Is Eva still, or is she moving? How is she feeling in the scene? That also affected the lighting. 

My first reference, and I couldn't quite figure out why, because the stories are not connected in any way, was There Will Be Blood. It’s a favorite of mine. Then, I started looking at some of the big kinds of wides and the vista shots and the way he [Paul Thomas Anderson] moved the camera. I'm not saying that this is anywhere near that masterpiece, but it's just a starting point we talked about. Then I started looking at the interiors of There Will Be Blood and how he shot some of those things with the lanterns and with candlelight. You start to create a grammar, and we were able to kind of quickly figure out things.

When you're shooting a film, things never go the way you expect. Everything is changing, and you're going from inside to outside. But because we did that prep, we figured out what we loved together. I think, for Eli, that kind of helped him understand how I saw the film. 

Odessa Young

You've probably played characters in period pieces more than any other actor your age. How does that affect your prep versus when you are working on a more contemporary role?

You can't play a time period. So, I don't know if it's necessarily preparing to play somebody from the 1890s or 1960s or whatever it might be. I think that, in terms of prep, a bankable way is accent and dialect work. The Damned was a little unique because none of us could speak Icelandic, so there wasn't a very specific authenticity in terms of the accent and the time period. I think we all settled on a more representative collective accent. And Eva could be different from the way that fishermen talk. 

But it does get pretty characterized when you get into the costumes and when you get into the politics of the era. I think understanding these things, understanding how strange and rare a female owner of a fishing station might have been in Iceland in the 1860s informs the way that she presents herself to these people that she's presiding over–at least that's how she thinks.

Those are the things that kind of clue you in, and those are the directions you can get from the time period and the era. But, at a certain point, you can't play 1860. You have to just play what's happening.

This movie does such an incredible job of visualizing guilt. That can't be something great to have inside you for half a year while you're prepping for this role. How did you leave all of that on set and still function in your regular life?

I don't know if I did. The reality of the situation is that when you're shooting on location in a place that you're not familiar with, these things are going to all become a part of it. These bad feelings are going to become intertwined with the process and with how you live your life. You have to be ready for that. But, I was extremely lucky to have very brilliant, sharp witted, hilarious co-stars and crew members for this film. We all did a great job of keeping each other buoyant throughout the process of shooting. You can't just be in the dumps all the time. You have to make a real effort to keep yourself separated at least somewhat from the situation–from the character and the circumstances. It's always going to be a little bit of a push and pull, a little bit of a balancing act between feeling what you must feel, and then also just letting yourself have a bit of fun.

The Damned is set in Iceland and has an Icelandic director. Screen Ireland is involved. It's a British movie. You're Australian. How is that global production context that you're working in different than when you’re in an Off-Broadway play–whenever a movie has to appeal to multiple audiences across the world, as opposed to that more focused work that you do on stage?

I don't think it's my job to appeal to people on screen or on stage. I think that, if it happens, that's brilliant. I think all I can do is present something that is hopefully akin to a truth and then that's as much as I can hope for. I don't know if the reality of the global nature of the film necessarily trickles down to me. Only in the sense that it is about a universal conundrum, and it feels bad for everybody whether you’re  European or if you're American or Australian. I have had to convince myself that it doesn't affect what I do in order to show up on set and perform.

Whenever you're working in a more remote environment like this very stark setting that is so much a part of The Damned, how do you maintain boundaries between your professional life and your personal life?

My personal life and my professional life are very intertwined because all of the people who are closest to me in my life know that I live and breathe what I do, and that I don't want to do anything but what I do. I don't love to not be working. So, I don't have to try so hard to separate the two. Maybe this will change one day, but at this point in my life, they aren't really separated. I find a lot of pleasure and purpose in what I do, and that is the only thing I want to feel in my life anyway, is pleasure and purpose. 

I just try not to be a dick when I'm, you know, having frostbite, and I try not to FaceTime my family and friends and bring that to them. I just like being at work. I like being on set. Call me crazy. 

The Damned opens in theaters nationwide this Friday.