Movie Review: The Lodge

The Lodge **** / *****

Directed by: Severin Fiala & Veronika Franz.

Written by: Sergio Casci and Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala.

Starring: Riley Keough (Grace), Jaeden Martell (Aidan), Lia McHugh (Mia Hall), Richard Armitage (Richard), Alicia Silverstone (Laura), Danny Keough (Aaron Marshall), Lola Reid (Young Grace), Philippe Ménard (Boy), Jarred Atkin (Priest at Funeral).

 

If you can get through some fairly jarring plot twists and leaps in logic, The Lodge is about as good as horror movies these days get. Directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, whose last film Goodnight Mommy, became a cult hit, allowing them this opportunity to make their English language debut, know what they’re doing in constructing a slow-burn horror movie. Both movies are about children, and the lengths they go to torment a parent – or potential stepparent, as in The Lodge. And both movie are slow burn horror films, gradually building the tension up and up and up, until it needs to be released. Goodnight Mommy became more violent as it went along – but I think The Lodge does it one better, by becoming more disturbing.

 

In the film, Grace (Riley Keough) is the new girlfriend of Richard (Richard Armitage) – who was in the process of divorcing Laura (Alicia Silverstone) when she committed suicide, shortly after he tells her he wants to get remarried. Their two kids, Aidan (Jarden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh) aren’t thrilled to be getting a new stepmother so soon, are fiercely protective of their mother even in death, and want to show Grace who she’s dealing with. They know a little about her past – her father was a cult leader, the rest of the cult killed themselves when Grace was just a child, but they don’t really know how deep her trauma is – or the extent of her mental illness.

 

The Lodge of the title is the family lodge – way up north somewhere which Richard, making one of the dumbest parental decisions in cinema history, decides would be a good place to spend Christmas – allowing the kids to get to know Grace. And what better way to accelerate the process than to leave the two kids and Grace alone together, so he can go back to work. A storm hits, the road become impassable, and communication with the outside world is pretty much cut off. None of this seems to worry Richard very much – who waits day after day before attempting to get up there, or ahold of anyone. Really, Richard is responsible for everything that happens.

 

So yeah, you do have to cut the film some slack. Clearly, what the filmmakers wanted is to get the kids and Grace together, and not give them room for escape – and even if they contrive an unbelievable way to do that, once they are trapped, the movie is really effective. Much of the reason belongs to Keough – who has quickly become one of the more interesting actresses working. Here, she is given a juicy role as a woman who means well – she wants to bond with Richard’s children – but for whom isolation, her past, and her mental illness makes her descend deeper and deeper, closer to madness.

 

The film has a clip of the trio watching The Thing (1982) – and will likely remind viewers of Kubrick’s The Shining as well, perhaps crossed with Hereditary. It isn’t a particularly original concept – people trapped in a snowbound, isolated house go insane – but it’s one handled well here. The film is a slow creep of the insanity – with three very effective performances.

 

So, yes, the movie is more contrived than I would have liked – but that contrivance is necessary to put these three characters – a would-be stepmother, and the two children who don’t want her, isolated together. From there, the filmmakers make a wonderful, creepy, disturbing – and at times scary movie – that ends perhaps the only way it could.