The Damned
Grasshopper Film | Release Date: May 16, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
71
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 9 Critic Reviews
Positive:
6
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisMay 15, 2025
The Damned is shaped as a wistful and laconic study of the minutiae of survival. Though billed as his first fiction film, it wobbles tantalizingly on a permeable line between narrative and documentary. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesTim GriersonJun 19, 2025
Don’t think of The Damned as an antiwar film — consider it an origin story for Minervini’s perceptive, understated exploration of an America still in conflict. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithMay 15, 2025
It’s a film about tableaus and texture that strives, largely successfully, to re-create the experience of being an extremely small part of a vast, historic conflagration. In effect, it’s an anti-spaghetti western, eschewing all things grandiose and bold-faced in favor of the small and prosaic. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerMay 19, 2024
If it were possible to send a camera crew back into the past to capture such an event, the result would be something close to what Minervini delivers in this quietly intoxicating and existentially real war movie. Read full review
70
VarietyPeter DebrugeMay 19, 2024
The Damned has a tendency to meander, but in so doing, it strives toward something authentic. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineZach LewisSep 7, 2024
Roberto Minervini’s camera ably conjures the melancholy and alienation that afflict his characters across scenes that merge documentary and neorealist techniques, but it’s far from realistic to expect a troop of soldiers to act aloof around each other when they’re all in the shit. Read full review
60
Screen DailyWendy IdeMay 19, 2024
At times the film feels almost subversive in its resolute lack of dramatic tension. And yet, as a melancholy mood piece, there’s a haunting quality to this handsomely filmed account of the slow attrition of faith, hope and purpose. Read full review
58
The Film StageJake Kring-SchreifelsNov 1, 2024
While The Damned sometimes resembles a reenactment, Minervini makes a valid attempt to highlight war’s aimless priorities on its marginalized and unheralded members. Read full review
58
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 19, 2024
Tellingly, The Damned only threatens to become anything more than a ponderous — if immaculately convincing — Civil War reenactment when Minervini allows his characters to articulate their fading dreams of salvation in the clearest possible terms. Read full review
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