I've learned a lot of odd things from horror film logic. One of them is the following: If you come across someone locked/chained up in basement, then don't jump to conclusions as they might be there for a legitimate reason. The odds of me ever having to apply this lesson are pretty slim but it's definitely something that I will keep in mind should I come across such a situation. You know, for safety reasons.
Set in Columbia, The Damned follows a man/father, his second wife, the daughter from the first wife, and two other young persons. After getting caught in a landslide they survive and come to an old inn. The old man living there refuses them entry until he finds out the daughter is injured and her father is trying to get her help. Once inside the inn some of the group find a young girl locked in the basement. They let her out only to later discover that she is possessed by the spirit of a Bruja that was killed by old descendants from the village. Everyone is fucked.
I want to like this movie more than I do. I thought that the spirit's backstory was flushed out well enough. The the spirit could never "die" because if you killed the body hosting it then the spirit jumped to your body. This is only a step above Horror 101 but I can look past this because of how well it fit the film. There are some good practical effects present here as well, like the woman cutting her face with the knife or the hands in the fake stomach.
On the flip side, The Damned took a page from the "shit I'm tired of seeing done poorly in horror" book by letting a majority of this film exist in a blue-grey tonality. Yes, it's raining. Yes, this film is spooky. You can do these things for atmosphere but when you're not offering me anything as a visual juxtaposition it just makes me feel bored. These are colors we associate with sadness and melancholy more than we associate them with horror. Even the blood in this film was incredibly dark in color. So I ask myself, would I watch this again? Nah. I've got better things to do. Like lock people up in my basement...
I give The Damned 1 copy of The Damned's s/t album out of 5:
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