The Lodge is a moody, atmospheric horror film directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. After a shocking death, Richard invites his fiancee (and lone suicide pact cult survivor) Grace to spend Christmas at the family lodge with his two children Aidan and Mia. Mother Nature snows them in (minus Richard), and scary family bonding time ensues. The film’s family drama and harsh death scenes have drawn comparisons to Hereditary, while it’s isolating blizzard is akin to The Shining. The movie’s pieces on their own are compelling, but a few key pieces are missing.
The biggest issue with this film is the lack of character development. You’d think with a minimal cast where our characters are stuck in a snowstorm, isolated from the outside world, that we would form an emotional connection with everyone (if not anyone) on screen. The kids (excellently portrayed by Jaeden Martell and Lia McHugh) and Grace’s dog only received empathy from me because they are vulnerable in being children and a pet. The adults have untapped history that could have been used to elevate the plot: the opening death scene is brutal and wholly unnecessary, Richard conveys only shallow emotion given the intense family changes he’s undergoing, and the only real look we get at Grace’s past cult life is through a pseudo-Youtube video and some uninformative flashbacks. When Grace is treated with disdain (which softens into reluctance) by her future stepchildren, I don’t feel any sort of sympathy for her and I don’t feel anxious about the situation. She could have been painted to be a woman walking into an unfortunate situation and trying her best, or she could have had her former cult membership blown up to make her less reliable. Unfortunately, she sits somewhere in the middle in what feels like unintentional ambiguity. It’s less trying to figure out if she’s trustworthy and more underdevelopment.
And then there are the comparisons. Yes, The Lodge has a dollhouse. No, that does not liken it to Hereditary. Where Hereditary had an entire subplot of unforeseen supernatural entanglement, The Lodge doesn’t quite decide what it wants its subtext to be. Hereditary is emotional (read as: debilitatingly depressing) and portrays pointed violence that adds to the plot; this, while dreary and definitely not uplifting, goes for shock rather than substance. To be fair, shock is valued in this genre but the movie gives off the impression it is smarter than that.
A similar descent into madness as The Shining, The Lodge doesn’t give itself enough time to compound the dread and doom in the same effective way. As a fan of short films and features that don’t exceed 90 minutes, it pains me to say this but… it was too short. Another 20 minutes would have given us enough time to tell us more about the cult (instead of slapping on the obvious Heaven’s Gate purple blankets and saying “that should do it”), provide more context to ex-wife Laura, and or present some sort of purpose for the movie. It’s just flat. A beautiful, overcast winterscape with some loud gunshots, but somehow flat.
I’ve danced around it for the majority of this review, so let’s get into that opening spoiler and my biggest gripe with the film. Laura graphically commits suicide upon hearing that her ex-husband is remarrying. It almost seemed disrespectful to her character to provide such little context to this event, while making the death itself one of the main pieces of gore in the film. Unless I’m completely missing the point, there was no symbolism to this act. Gratuitous violence has its place in crappy B-movies, but feels contrived in a film that tries so hard to be emotionally impactful.
Is this movie worth watching? Sure. It’s honestly much better than plenty of other indie genre flicks floating around right now. But when a film takes itself so serious, we as viewers should take it seriously too and call it out when it doesn’t live up to its potential.
The Lodge screened at Cinepocalypse 2019.