An Overlooked Folk-Horror Movie With 91% On Rotten Tomatoes Is A Streaming Hit On Hulu

Now that pretty much every movie ever made is at our fingertips, finding something decent to watch sometimes feels like more trouble than it's worth. Which is why it's always nice when something good actually rises to the surface and makes our jobs as viewers that much easier. When it comes to horror, free streamer Tubi offers a surprisingly great selection of horror movies, while Hulu hasn't had the best track record this year following the streaming success of a forgotten Sandra Bullock horror movie with a truly terrifying 7% Rotten Tomatoes score. But the streamer is making up for that now by showcasing an overlooked folk horror film that's more than worthy of its high RT score.

2024's "The Damned" comes from Icelandic filmmaker Thordur Palsson, who previously oversaw the Netflix crime series "The Valhalla Murders," and writer Jamie Hannigan, working from a story by Palsson. ​​The period horror movie stars Odessa Young as Eva, a 19th-century widow living on a remote fishing outpost. After a ship begins to sink off the coast, Eva convinces her fellow outpost dwellers not to help in order to maintain enough food to make it through the winter. Unfortunately, it turns out unknowable supernatural forces of evil weren't too pleased about the whole "leave them to die" thing and the crew find themselves tormented by a darkness that threatens to take them all one by one.

Now, the same audiences that sent Bullock's horror dud to the top of the Hulu charts — and have presumably been similarly haunted by their decision ever since — have helped restore the cosmic balance by propelling "The Damned" up the Hulu rankings.

"The Damned," which was shot on location in Iceland, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival back in June 2024 before hitting a handful of theaters in the U.S. on January 3, 2025. It fared very well with critics at the time, even if its $1.3 million box office take didn't exactly make it a surprise horror hit in the vein of "Skinamarink" or "Terrifier 2."

Now, however, "The Damned" is getting more of the exposure it deserves after hitting Hulu on May 9, 2025, and immediately finding an audience. As per FlixPatrol, a site that tracks streaming viewership, after just four days on the service the movie became the number three most-watched film on Hulu. Even more impressive, "The Damned" managed to hit number eight on the overall chart, which combines both TV shows and movies, making it a certified hit that has a real shot at topping the charts before the week is out.

While "The Damned" didn't cause much of a stir in the U.S. upon its theatrical debut, hopefully this Hulu bump will give Thordur Palsson more of a profile and we'll get more haunting folk horror films in the years to come. It will surely help if his movie can hit number one on Hulu before audiences move on, but "The Damned" faces some tough competition in that regard.

At the time of writing, Chloe Fineman's critically-acclaimed comedy "Summer of 69" is rocking the Hulu charts, where it currently sits at number one. Fineman's coming-of-age comedy is genuinely funny and has a healthy dose of heart to support the laughs, so overcoming that breakout hit will be a tough ask. But "The Damned" is doing well enough that it might just manage it over the coming days, which would be an impressive achievement for a grim Icelandic horror movie.

It helps that "The Damned" did so well with critics. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, the film currently enjoys a stellar 91% rating based on a healthy 75 reviews. Alissa Wilkinson of the New York Times praised the way in which the movie "morphs into something a bit different from straight-ahead horror" in the latter half, even while she did acknowledge that "a period of slog" slowed its momentum part-way through. Randy Myers of the San Jose Mercury News, on the other hand, enjoyed the slog, commending "The Damned" for being " in no rush about revealing its horrors" and claiming that this approach "works in its favor," making the twisted stuff that occurs in the third act all the more effective.

You'll have to watch the movie to find out what sort of twisted stuff it has in store, but considering this is clearly a quality horror film that's actually at the top of the streaming charts, why wouldn't you? Especially if it'll save you from the real horror of trawling through the "content" swamps looking for something to watch.