The Damned (2 Stars)

This is the 17th film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

It's rare that there's a consensus among the guests at the Stuttgart film festivals. Whatever is shown, there are some people who love it and some who hate it. "The Damned" is an exception. As we walked out heads were shaking. Nobody liked it.

The film takes place in the 19th Century in a remote fishing village in Iceland. Maybe it's an exaggeration to call it a village, because there are only a few huts side by side. Eva owns the fishing boats after the death of her husband Magnus. The fishermen see a ship sinking after hitting the rocks, but Eva says it's too dangerous to rescue the sailors. The next day cases with food supplies wash onto the shore, so they row to the ship in small boats to salvage more food. They find sailors clinging to the rocks, begging to be saved, so they abandon the search before the sailors can climb into their boats.

After this strange things happen. The superstitious sailors blame a creature called a draugr. One by one the fishermen die. The coffins are laid on the beach, because the ice is too thick to bury them until the summer.

My brief description makes the film sound interesting. Yes, the plot is interesting, but the film is so slow and so difficult to see that it's impossible to enjoy it. There are constant snow storms, and it's impossible to distinguish the shadowy figures. Added to this, there's a plot twist at the end which raises more questions than it solves.