Forgettable Damned Possessed by Mediocrity
The infuriating thing about The Damned is that it comes agonizingly close to being a good horror yarn. With a great setup and an ominous second act backing it up, the initial portions of this Columbian sojourn are fascinatingly unsettling. But the last third is an intolerable, unimaginative misfire, everything building to a foregone conclusion that’s nowhere near as scary or as disturbing as the filmmakers intend. It’s a South American journey to no man’s land, this saga of family dysfunction and satanic possession an instantly forgettable mess bordering on disastrous.
David Reynolds (Peter Facinelli) and his young fiancé Lauren (Sophie Myles) have come to Bogota to bring the former’s 19-year-old daughter Jill (Nathalia Ramos) back to the States. On the drive to Medellin their car meets with disaster, leaving them, along with David’s former sister-in-law Gina (Carolina Guerra), a popular television personality, and her cameraman Ramon (Sebastian Martínez), stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Taking refuge in a dilapidated, long closed inn under the care of the watchful Felipe (Gustavo Angarita), the group is flabbergasted when they find a young girl, Ana Maria (Julieta Salazar), being kept in the bowels of the basement as a prisoner as if she were a mangy, rabies-riddled dog. But when they release her they also unleash an unspeakable evil, a horrific demonic presence suddenly intent on taking them all out one by one until none are left.
Early on, The Damned has it all going right. While not exactly complex, director Víctor García (Return to House on Haunted Hill) sets the stage nicely, striking the right portentous chord leading the viewer to believe anything and everything can happen at any moment. He finds the interesting pieces of Richard D’Ovidio’s (The Call) screenplay and runs with them, crafting an unsettling atmosphere that’s uncomfortably, and gloriously, omnipresent.
But as soon as the true nature behind the evil inhabiting the inn is revealed everything quickly goes downhill. The body-hopping possession antics get old instantly, and it isn’t exactly surprising who is going to find themselves on the pointy end of something sharp next. Most importantly, the way things end, the climax García and D’Ovidio have in store for the Reynolds clan, none of what happens to either David or his daughter Jill is even moderately surprising, lessening the impact of what transpires to the point seeing how it all turns out isn’t worthy of the bother.
Facinelli is good. Ramos is even better, while there’s a great bit with Myles where she makes the transition from happily ecstatic to breathlessly terrified when the realization strikes her that a heroic act has ended up being anything but. Frederik Wiedmann’s score is suitably disquieting, while Alejandro Moreno’s (The Squad) camerawork is far better and must more eloquently unnerving than the actual narrative itself ever proves itself to be.
If only the movie had the strength to pull out all the stops, to do something different, to shake up its narrative structure and do something unexpected or even slightly original. García is great at showcasing sequences of carnage and bloodletting but terrible at finding the inherent emotion in the plight of his protagonists, thus an emotional connection to anything taking place is practically nonexistent. The Damned isn’t so much as a bad film as it is an inconsequential one, that fact alone more disquieting than any of the horrific events depicted in a single one of its unremarkable 87 minutes.
Film Rating: 2 out of 4
