'The Lodge' Is Visually Beautiful And Absolutely Haunting [Review]
You know that specific terror of having to walk into a party alone - to feel like a lone wolf in a sea of people who already know each other? Well, if that feeling were a movie, it would be The Lodge.
From the brilliant directors behind Goodnight Mommy - Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz - The Lodge follows children Aidan (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh) as their father, Richard (Richard Armitage), brings them to a remote cabin for the holidays. The hitch here is that they’re not alone. He also brings fiancée Grace (Riley Keough), who, let’s just say, the children are not fond of.
Things only get worse when their dad has to head into work for a few days, leaving the children alone with Grace. You feel for Grace, because you can see how hard she is trying to bond with Aidan and Mia, who are fiercely loyal to their mother (Alicia Silverstone). However, it’s not hard to understand where the kids are coming from, either. This new woman is all a shock to them, so having to spend a holiday with her must seem unbearable.
The Lodge is mesmerizing and deeply unsettling. It’s not your typical horror - though there are scenes that will make you jump - but more of a slow burn, along the lines of The Witch or, well, Goodnight Mommy. Things slowly unravel as the movie progresses, and I promise you, it will not end at all the way you expect.
Time and time again Grace is thwarted when trying to connect with the kids. Before Mia and Aidan's father leaves, she works up the courage to join the family outside, where they are skating and playing on the ice. But this only infuriates Mia and Aidan, who notice Grace is wearing their mother’s red beanie.
When Grace tries to bond with Mia over her beloved dog, Grady, the latter seems to be thawing a bit. The name Grady makes me think of the caretaker from The Shining - and that would make sense, seeing as The Lodge plays upon a bunch of similar fears. Mia offers to show Grace the video the kids have made their father for Christmas. Of course, the video turns out to have quite the focus on Richard’s ex-wife, Laura.
The kids share a fierce bond, protecting each other, and sneaking off to stay away from Grace. Prior to heading to the lodge, Aidan and Mia did a little digging on Grace. Turns out, she is the only surviving member of a cult. In fact, that’s how she and Richard met. He wrote a book about cults, and guess who’s in it?
Weird things start to happen, like Grace finding Christmas presents she'd placed in a drawer, stuffed back into her luggage, under the bed. Grace takes down a spooky portrait that reminded her of her religious cult days. She walks back into the room to find the portrait back on the wall. The next morning, Grace wakes up to find all of her stuff is missing - the gifts she brought for everyone, her medicine, even the fridge was empty! No one seems to know what happened, but everyone is on edge.
As the film progresses, creepy things continue to happen around the cabin that no one can explain. Grady goes missing. Grace starts to have nightmares. She starts to see things that may or may not be there. Knowing what we do about Grace, it’s hard to tell if there is some kind of haunting happening, or if she’s simply slowly unraveling. And I think that’s the point. Much like The Turning (which came out in January, and stars another It alum), the big mystery of the movie is - Is any of this happening, or is it all in her head? However, The Lodge’s execution of this device is much more successful.
Now, compounded with the tension of being stuck in a house with your fiancé’s kids - who seem to hate you - you have the horror of lack of heat and sustenance to survive the holiday. Grace’s phone dies, and she embarks on a hail Mary of a trek to find some way out of this hell she’s been trapped in. However, her bitter, cold journey - remember, she doesn’t even have a coat at this point - into the snowy terrain leads her right back to the dreaded lodge. It’s a heartbreaking moment when she sees the house and lets out a cry of absolute desperation.
But I will warn you, as rough as that seems, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The drama amps up when the kids begin to question if they are actually in hell. Had they died and this was their purgatory? For every reveal of this movie, there is an equal, if not more dramatic, payoff.
It's cinematically beautiful, and as brilliant as it is troubling. In a sea of horror movies, The Lodge will stick in your head far past your last viewing. I've seen it multiple times at this point, and still, in writing this, I wanted to watch it again. It's the kind of movie where, the more you watch it, the more details you pick up on. It brings me back to watching the VHS special features for The Sixth Sense over and over, marveling at how M. Night Shyamalan used the color red to warn the audience a ghost was coming.
A few days after watching The Lodge, I had this strange hymn stuck in my head. It was bothering me, because it was so familiar, and yet I couldn't place it. I was raised Catholic, so it wasn't necessarily that strange, except I realized it was the hymn Grace sings at a particularly dark moment in the movie.
The Lodge is in theaters now. Check it out if you'd like to be haunted, like I am.
The original publication of this article is on Creepy Kingdom.
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