Ranking Every 2025 Movie: The Damned

With the Top 100 Movies Of The 1990's (finally) wrapping up at the end of the year, I still wanted to blog about movies. So I decided to see every movie that comes out in 2025 in wide release and rank them. 

I define wide release as playing in 1,000 screens or more. That's just a bare minimum so even a movie comes out under a 1,000 screens that looks interesting, I'll check that out too. That's where The Damned comes into play. It only opened on 732 screens. It didn't do great making only $800,000 and opened in 13th place. That's a shame because this is an effective thriller.

These reviews will all be spoiler-free so I'll never give away major plot details but I will talk about the movie as a whole.

The Damned takes place in a small fishing village in Iceland in the 1870's. A young widow (Odessa Young) now runs the fishing operations. They see a foreign boat in the distance get trapped by rocks and then sink. Because their own resources are so scarce, they don't go out to help them. Then bad things really start to happen.

Dimitrios Kambouris. Getty Images.

If you loved The Thing or Alien, then you'll like The Damned. There is even an Alien homage of sorts early on. It's a decent enough thriller that is helped enormously by a strong lead actress in Young and a brisk 89 minute run time. I had only seen Young before in The Stand series on CBS. That series (based on my favorite book) was horrendous but that wasn't her fault. 

Having this actually shot in Iceland also helps out a ton. It makes a movie that probably didn't cost much to make instead look like a major feature with the stunning landscape around them. It also adds to the isolation aspect of what these characters are going through. Similar to The Thing, there is nowhere to run when you are surrounded by snow and ice. I give director and co-writer Thordur Parson credit for shooting this there. It can't be easy working in those element but it was absolutely needed to build the tension in this movie.

It would have to be a pretty lousy movie year if this is still in my Top 10 by July but as it stands right now, The Damned is the best movie of 2025! I guess that means it's also the worst. Next week Den Of Thieves 2: Pantera opens wide. We will see if that can knock The Damned off the top spot.

Grade: B-

2025 Movies

1. The Damned