Main cast: Riley Keough (Grace Marshall), Jaeden Martell (Aidan Hall), Lia McHugh (Mia Hall), Richard Armitage (Richard Hall), and Alicia Silverstone (Laura Hall)
Directors: Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala
The Lodge is a beautifully made, atmospheric, and eerie movie, and it’s also a starkly depressing one.
We have the quintessential asshole psychologist and selfish father, Richard Hall. He dumps his wife Laura for Grace Marshall, a woman he met while researching the suicide cult in which Grace once belonged to, and upon realizing that their marriage is over, Laura shoots herself in the head. Never mind, Richard is marrying Grace anyway, and yay, now he doesn’t have to pay alimony, so he decides to dump his kids Aidan and Mia at Grace’s mountain lodge for Christmas while he goes off to work. Sorry, I mean, he wants his kids to know Grace better.
Aidan and Mia hate Grace, blaming her for their mother’s death, so they make it very hard for her to reach out to them. Grace tries very hard, but her upbringing leaves her very socially maladjusted to connect with these kids. Hence, the more she tries, the harder they push back. Worse, weird things begin to happen, making Grace and the kids wonder whether they are going crazy left there in the lodge with nobody else around, or something sinister and supernatural is indeed afoot.
This movie seems to come to be when someone who really likes Riley Keough decided one day, “How do we make get people praise her like crazy? Why, to put her in a movie where every other character is a hateful piece of turd and the story doesn’t matter – now no one can threaten to eclipse her even a little!” Fortunately, Ms Keough rises to the occasion. Grace is a haunting, tragic creature, as every trace of vulnerability and fear is shown on her expressive face. Combined with the superb lighting, music, and set pieces, the entire movie is designed to showcased the actress as someone who really can act and is more than just a pretty face. Indeed, poor Grace – as the sole survivor of a suicide cult, she tries so hard to adjust to normalcy, but the hateful family she finds herself in isn’t going to let her do that.
I won’t go into spoilers here, so let me just say that folks who watch this thing will end up thinking that poor Grace is the true victim here. That is, of course, by design. The Lodge is more of a psychological horror film, a character study of sorts that is very difficult to sit through, and there are no cheap gimmicks like jump scares to ruin the immersive effect. This is one movie that hinges around the lead actress carrying the whole thing to the finish line, and thank goodness, Ms Keough is more than up to the task.
Still, the story! Seriously, the twist here is straight out of the worst of M Night Shyamalan’s handbook. The whole thing is on the implausible side, and for the twist to work, it also relies a bit too much of coincidences coming into place just right.
That’s why I said earlier that this movie is all about the lead actress, as everything else about this movie falls on the flat side. The twist is lame, and other characters are all twats who deserve what they get. The people behind this movie want the audience to love Riley Keough and hate humanity in general. Whether or not this is a reason to watch The Lodge, well, I leave that to other folks to decide for themselves. Me, I don’t regret watching this movie, as it can be quite a revelation at times. Still, I do feel a little disappointed once the movie is over, because I feel like the movie sort of just gave up and went with the flow after they realized that they had cast the right actress and she would do all the heavy lifting for them.
