The Lodge (Review)
The Lodge is a Dark and Twisted Film, but I’m Not Sure if that’s a Good Thing or Not…
The Lodge follows an emerging trend of atmospheric horror films, taking notes from movies like Hereditary and The Lighthouse to create a heavy, dread-filled ambiance. In other words, The Lodge is intense. hard to watch, and will leave you feeling pretty awful afterward. Even now, I’m still not sure if I actually enjoyed it or not because it never offers any definitive answers regarding the events or the characters. Now, I’m used to horror movies not exactly having “happy” endings (mostly because slashers never know when to stay dead), but The Lodge doesn’t even offer us a satisfying one.
*Note: I usually try to avoid spoilers in reviews. However, I can’t properly review The Lodge without including some spoilers. I’ll try to be as vague as possible.*
If nothing else, The Lodge reaffirmed my feelings on having kids. The film follows two children (Jaeden Martell and Lia McHugh) who are left distraught after their mother’s suicide. Confused by the senseless act, the two decide to blame their father’s (Richard Armitage) new girlfriend, Grace (Riley Keough). Forced into a vacation at an old lodge, the siblings decide to act out in an attempt to drive Grace away. Their vicious pranks take advantage of the fact that Grace was the only survivor of a suicide cult as a child and is suffering from PTSD. Things get out of hand when it turns out that gaslighting someone already struggling with severe mental issues doesn’t end well.
Directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz (along with co-writer Sergio Casci) make it all too clear exactly what kind of movie The Lodge is going to be with a pretty blunt homage to Hereditary. The film features a dollhouse built to resemble the titular lodge right down to the most minute details, including a set of dolls to represent everyone in the film. This very clearly reflects that there is a greater power at play, herding the characters about like they are merely dolls themselves in a celestial playhouse. The majority of the film follows Grace trapped in the cabin with the children as a snowstorm rages on outside, turning them into mice trapped inside a maze. This theme is made all the more palpable by the harsh wood paneling that is ever-present in the cabin itself. It seems to absorb all light turning the quaint vacation home into a dark and dreary place. Needless to say, The Lodge has a very depressing aesthetic which helps to reflect the mental strain the characters are under, but is also, well, depressing.
I found The Lodge to be infuriating at times because I was never sure who the bad guy was supposed to be. On the one hand, violence against children (most of it implied) is never justified (well, maybe sometimes it is). However, I can’t help feeling like these little bastards deserve everything that happened to them. That’s probably because Jaden Martell is so good at seeming like a spoiled brat throwing a tantrum throughout the film. He constantly takes things too far as he keeps trying to push Grace to the breaking point. Of course, things get out of hand in the end and he realizes that he’s taken things too far, but I don’t believe that redeems him at all. If anything, Grace is the character that you feel for the most. She suffered so much and came so far only for two brats to strip that all away because they don’t want a new mommy, especially one who is “crazy” according to them. Well, spoiler alert kids, your original mommy (Alicia Silverstone) wasn’t exactly the picture of mental health either.
While I found The Lodge to be a haunting movie, it also felt like it dragged on and on without anything really happening. Religion and religious iconography play a big part in the movie as Grace is constantly reminded of her fanatical preacher father and her time in the cult. Thanks to a stellar performance from Riley Keough, we can clearly see these elements wearing on her character as she tries her best to deal with the antagonistic children. But, they simply hang there in the air for most of the film, lurking ominously as though they’re supposed to inspire a sense of fear. For most of the movie, nothing really happens. It’s just them trapped in a cabin, slowly going crazy as the wind wails outside. Now plenty of brilliant films have played with this concept. However, The Lodge doesn’t have the same sense of oppressing dread that made those other films so good.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that The Lodge is a bad movie. It’s actually a fairly well-executed one with some solid themes and ideas at its core. It fails to really accomplish its goals as it takes a less-is-more approach. The problem is that when it comes to cabin in the woods movies, you need to have something more to keep the audience invested. The stakes have to be made very clear from the beginning, and you need solid heroes/victims to root for. Dealing with terrible children is anxiety-inducing, but it’s not something that really pushes you to the edge of your seat. The same goes for the whole “into the mouth of madness” theme. Conceptually, it’s quite eerie, but there has to be more to make it work on the big screen. While I applaud The Lodge for working with these elements, it feels more like a rough draft than a masterpiece of horror.
