You Probably Haven’t Seen The Best Horror Movie Of 2025 So Far
2025 is still young, but there has already been a great horror movie released in theaters. That movie is The Damned, and chances are you haven’t seen it.
The Damned was released on January 3rd in the United States. Technically the release is considered wide, but a look at the numbers shows that it was only put into 732 theaters across the country. That’s barely above the qualification of a limited release. More importantly, it means a lot of people haven’t had the chance to watch it.
The story of The Damned takes place at a small fishing station in a desolate fjord in Iceland. Set in the late 1800s, the film uses folk horror, ice-cold survival, and intense drama to create a monster-movie driven by the psychological horror of guilt.
Odessa Young stars as Eva, a widowed woman in charge of a group of fishermen. It’s a role she inherited from her late husband who died on the very land where she and her crew are stationed. The fishing is bad this year, and starvation is becoming a looming threat. One day, Eva and her men see a ship sinking not too far away, out in the water. Rather than attempt to help them, Eva makes the difficult decision to prioritize her own men’s well-being over the lives of the ship’s crew. That decision haunts the people of the fishing station, and perhaps creates a literal monster.
Helga, a superstitious woman who cooks and cleans for the fishermen, warns everyone of a draugr, a creature that acts like a vengeful spirit. Though their ideas about such things differ among Eva and her crew, they all experience a series of hardships that point to the existence of the angry dead.
The Damned is a thoroughly bleak movie that begins on a down note, and it only gets worse for the characters as the story progresses. The steady decline into madness is a story well told, with only a slight stumble towards the end of the film as the ambiguity of the situation is undercut by a straightforward explanation. Overall though, The Damned is easily the best horror movie released in 2025 so far.
Where can you see it? The Damned is currently only in theaters, but it’s set to begin streaming on January 21st. So it’s not a long wait if you can’t find it at a theater near you.
It’s just a shame that movies like this don’t get more exposure and attention. Right now, The Damned sits at just over $1.25 million at the box office even with its smallish release, but it would be great if nerve-rattling films like this had more eyes on them.