The Damned, a 2025 folk horror film that is now streaming on Hulu, will make you grateful you’re not a 19th-century fisherman stuck in the Arctic Circle in the dead of winter. That’s the kind of situation that really messes with your head!
Directed Thordur Palsson and written by Jamie Hannigan, who adapted the screenplay from a story by Palsson, The Damned toes the line between horror and psychological thriller. The film stars Australian actor Odessa Young, alongside Joe Cole, Rory McCann, Lewis Gribben, and Turlough Convery in the supporting cast. The movie had a small release in U.S. theaters in January, and though it didn’t make much money, it did receive positive reviews. Now that The Damned is streaming on Hulu, the movie is finding its second life.
But with more viewers comes more confusion. If you found yourself confused by The Damned ending, don’t worry, Decider is here to help. Read on for a complete analysis of The Damned plot summary and The Damned ending explained, including The Damned ending meaning.
Eva (Odessa Young) is the owner of a 19th century fishing station in the Arctic circle, inherited from her late husband, who died at sea the previous fishing season. The crew is halfway through the winter, and it’s not going well. The men are forced to start eating their bait to stay alive.
The next day, while preparing to fish, Eva and the men witness a large merchant ship crash into the dangerous, sharp rocks off the coast, nicknamed “the Teeth.” Some men want to take a rescue boat out to help the victims, but helmsman Ragnar (Rory McCann) argues they barely have enough food as is, and that it would be too dangerous to risk their lives to sail into those rocky waters. The men look to Eva to make the call, and she sides with Ragnar.
The next morning, Eva finds a barrel of salt pork washed ashore, still good to eat. After showing Ragnar her find, the two decide to take a team to sail out to the wreckage to salvage any other supplies. They are unexpectedly confronted by survivors of the crash, who beg for help in the Spanish dialect of Basque. Ragnar orders them to paddle away, but the Basque survivors attempt to swim to the boat. In the struggle that ensues, Ragnar falls over board. A survivor attempts to grab Eva to pull himself up. Her friend Daniel (Joe Cole) hits the survivor with an axe, killing him. The fishing crew returns to show, and light a bonfire in case Ragnar survives and swims to shore. But he doesn’t.
The next morning, the fishing crew finds the bodies of the dead Basque boat crash victims washed up on the beach. One of the young crew members finds a watch on one of the bodies, but Eva orders him to put it back. The fishing crew builds coffins for the bodies and brings them to the nearby grave site, where Eva’s husband is also buried. Their superstitious cook, Helga (Siobhan Finneran) warns them to tie up the bodies and spin the coffins three times, in order to prevent the dead from returning as “draugr,” a mythical creature from Nordic folklore that is basically a zombie. However, the crew dismisses Helga’s warnings as an old wives’ tale.
Eva begins dreaming of the man that Daniel killed for her, and also begins to think she sees a draugr. Daniel assures her that her mind is playing tricks on her. The crew hits a stroke of luck, has a great day out fishing, and celebrates with a party. Eva has a moment where she sees a draugr in the station, but blinks and it’s gone. Helga insists to Eva that the draugr is real, and that it is coming to kill all of them. Helga says the only way to kill the draugr is with fire.
The next morning, all the crew’s freshly-caught fish and remaining bait has been stolen. The crew follows tracks in the snow, and discovers their fish has been thrown out. Helga has disappeared, so they suspect she may be involved. But the tracks disappear before any culprit is caught. A freaked-out Eva insists on visiting the grave site and opening the coffins of the Basque shipwreck victims. They discover one coffin is empty, with the nails ripped from the lid. Eva and the remaining men takes this as confirmation that the draugr is real.
One of the crew, Hakon (Turlough Convery), comes down with a bad fever. In a state of delirium, he warns them all that the draugr is coming for them, and attacks Daniel. Another crew member saves Daniel by striking and killing Hakon. The men say the draugr got into Hakon’s head. Daniel admits he, too, is seeing things, but he warns Eva that “the dead are much less dangerous than the living.” Hmph!
The men once again go out to fish, because they are out of food. This time, Daniel is the one who sees something scary in the fog. He injures his head trying to run. Later, a delirious Daniel attacks Eva, and then kills himself with a knife. A desperate Eva gathers the three remaining men on a hunt to find and kill the draugr.
While out in the wilderness, wind and snow causes a total white-out. One of the last three men, blinded by the snow, steps off a cliffside. Was it an accident? Or did the Draugr make him do it? Eva recovers his body, and she also discovers what happened to Helga: She froze to death. Eva and the two last men alive bind up all the dead bodies with rope, hoping to prevent them from becoming more draugr.
Eva and the two remaining men decide to flee on the boat. While the men prepare the boat, Eva witnesses an intruder in the fishing station. She attacks the intruder, who appears to be a monstrous zombie. She shoots it, lights the entire station on fire, and flees.
Eva tells the men that the draugr attacked her but that she killed it, and burned it, and that it’s all over now. The men accept this story. However, in the last moments of the movie, we see that fight scene again, and learn what actually happened. The intruder in the station was not a draugr, but one of the Basque-speaking survivors of the shipwreck. Presumably, he was still alive when they nailed him into the coffin, and he later freed himself, which is why one of the coffins was empty.
Subtitles appear on the screen so we can understand what the man is saying. He explains that he is the one who destroyed the fishing haul, out of anger for how the shipwreck victims were treated, including his brother. He apologizes and begs to use their boat to escape. He holds out the gold pocket watch that Eva made her men put back at the beginning of the film. Perhaps the watch belonged to this guy’s now-dead brother. Or maybe he just witnessed Eva’s instruction to return to the watch, and appreciated the gesture. He holds out the watch to Eva, as if hoping to remind her of her humanity.
Eva takes the watch, but then shoots and kills the guy anyhow. We see him cry out as she lights him on fire. Eva remembers this with shame on her face, and with that, the movie ends.
Basically, there was never a zombie terrorizing this crew. Everyone was just hungry, stressed, traumatized, and plagued by guilt over what they had done. The crew slowly began to lose it and destroy each other. You guys ever seen that Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”? It’s kind of like that, except in this one, there aren’t real monsters.
Daniel summed up the movie best when he said, “The dead are much less dangerous than the living.” In the end, it was the living humans who destroyed themselves.