Spoiler warning: This post contains major spoilers for the film The Damned (2024), currently streaming on Hulu.
In The Damned (2024), director Thordur Palsson crafts a haunting and methodical psychological horror steeped in isolation, folklore, and the unraveling of the human mind. Set against the icy backdrop of 19th-century Norway, the film begins like a traditional supernatural chiller but subtly transforms into something far more disturbing—and ultimately, more human.
The final act of the film delivers a gut-punch twist that reframes everything we’ve seen. If you found yourself questioning what really happened, whether the monster was real, and what the ending truly means, you’re not alone. Let’s dig deep into the final scenes, their significance, and the message The Damned leaves behind.
Setting the Stage: Men, Myth, and Madness
The story follows a remote Norwegian fishing community in 1874 that stumbles upon a shipwreck. Among the wreckage is a sealed coffin—marked with strange symbols and containing a decayed corpse. The body is assumed to be that of a “draugr,” a revenant from Norse mythology known to rise from the grave to haunt the living.
As the group, which includes a female outsider named Eva, brings the coffin to shore, things begin to deteriorate quickly. Strange dreams, violent outbursts, missing supplies, and mistrust plague the camp. The isolation intensifies, and superstition takes root.
The fishermen, hardened by nature and faith, slowly begin to suspect that they are cursed. Every misfortune is attributed to the possible presence of the undead. Paranoia grows. Logic erodes. The dread builds not from what we see, but what we fear might be lurking in the snowstorm outside—or inside each other.
The Ending: Unmasking the “Draugr”
As the film reaches its climax, Eva is the last person standing. The others have been killed, gone mad, or died from exposure. Alone and desperate, Eva spots a shadowy figure staggering toward the cabin. Believing it to be the draugr, she fires her gun and ignites the structure, watching the body burn.
Here’s where the twist hits.
In a flashback, we see the truth: the figure is not a monster, but a living survivor from the wreck—a Basque man who was mistakenly buried alive with his brother. He survived in the coffin, broke free, and finally reached the camp. He speaks in his native language, shows Eva the pocket watch they had buried with the corpse, and pleads for help.
But Eva, deluded and fearful, shoots him anyway. She kills an innocent man—perhaps the only other survivor—believing she’s saving herself from an undead curse. The final shot shows her walking into the snowy expanse, watch in hand, leaving behind a trail of ashes and irreversible guilt.
Interpreting the Ending: Psychological Horror Over Supernatural Terror
The power of The Damned lies in its ambiguity. It plays with expectations and gradually undermines its own premise. So, what does it all mean?
1. The Draugr Was Never Real
There’s no concrete evidence that a supernatural being ever existed. The men believed they were cursed, and in that belief, they created their own destruction. What was perceived as hauntings were likely hallucinations or misunderstandings rooted in superstition and fear. The horror here is not that the draugr existed, but that the belief in it was enough to destroy them all.
2. Fear Is the True Monster
Eva’s final act is not heroic—it’s tragic. She kills a man trying to connect with her, a man holding the very symbol of humanity and memory (the pocket watch). This act underscores a key theme of the film: how fear can warp reality and push people into morally irreversible decisions. Eva, who begins the film as a skeptic and outsider, succumbs to the same dread that consumed the rest.
3. Survival at the Cost of Humanity
In choosing to kill the survivor and burn the cabin, Eva ensures her own safety but at the cost of her conscience. The act isolates her not just physically, but morally. The pocket watch becomes a chilling symbol—both a reminder of the man she killed and a token of what she chose to forget in order to survive.
Themes and Symbolism
🔄 The Draugr as Metaphor
The draugr operates as a symbol for unresolved guilt and the burden of the past. It haunts not because it is undead, but because the characters carry internal rot—decisions they can’t undo, lives they failed to save, sins they buried and tried to forget.
⌚ The Pocket Watch
Time, memory, and humanity—encapsulated in a simple object. The fact that the survivor offers it before being killed shows that he’s not a monster but a man holding on to what little connection remains. Eva taking the watch might symbolize a desire to preserve the truth, or perhaps to suppress it.
🔥 Fire and Ice
Fire is often a symbol of purification in horror. But here, it’s destructive and final. By setting the cabin—and the survivor’s body—ablaze, Eva is not banishing evil; she’s erasing evidence, silencing conscience, and trying to cleanse herself through destruction.
Final Message: The Horror Within
The Damned is a masterclass in atmosphere, but its true strength lies in the slow, suffocating way it turns its horror inward. The final twist reveals that the supernatural was never needed—the fear, guilt, isolation, and human error were more than enough to create tragedy.
In the end, Eva survives. But she is damned—not by an undead revenant, but by the weight of what she’s done and what she chose to believe.
Conclusion
The ending of The Damned (2024) isn’t just a twist—it’s a mirror. It reflects our tendency to create monsters out of fear, to justify cruelty through superstition, and to lose our moral compass when faced with the unknown. It forces us to ask: what would we do in her place?
Would we see the man for what he is—or only the monster we expect?
What did you think of the film’s ending?
Do you think the draugr was real? Or was it all fear and guilt?
Drop your theories in the comments below.