THE LODGE **** UK / USA 2019 Dirs: Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala. 108 mins
The family unit has been moved around, changed, and perverted into violence by natural or supernatural means in genre films since the film was in kinescopes. The evil stepfather and in this case, the stepmother who inherits a family get an intelligence boost in the wintery dark thriller The Lodge (2019).
Hammer Films and Film Nation combine for the rather bleak story reminiscent of The Lighthouse (2019) which could be a companion. Bleakness but in a good brooding way like good ghost stories should be.
Grace (Riley Keough) wants to take care of those hard feelings against her as soon as possible. She volunteers to spend more time with her boyfriend, Richard (Richard Armitage), and his children Mia (Lia McHugh) and Aiden (Jaeden Martell), who are still mourning their mother Laura (Alicia Silverstone), who committed suicide months ago, over the holidays in a remote cabin. The children of course reject her, but when their father must leave them in her care, the brother and sister decide to find out what makes their new stepmother tick. They set about making Grace uncomfortable by doing little things, subtle things. Not taking part in activities or doing it half-heartedly.
Aiden even goes so far as to spy on Grace in the shower, when confronted by this by her he says ‘hormones’. The enterprising intelligently played children find on the net that Grace has a connection to their mom’s death and was a member of an extreme Christian cult. Grace loses her grip on reality, seeing things, and having the power go, shut off in the cabin while Richard is away. What sends her over the edge is Grace loses her beloved dog in the snow to find it later. I have said it many times and continue to say I am against harming animals in film it is cheap, however, this was done with dignity, and respect and was part of the story.
Then on for Grace, the children’s deceased mother’s presence haunts the lodge both in spirit and through Catholic iconography, which is made prominent in the rather astonishing opening moments of the suicide. The crosses are dear to the children and memories of their mother torture Grace bringing back memories from her own recollections of the cult.
Directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala teamed up with co-writer Sergio Casci. In “The Lodge” the children are predisposed to mistrust their dad’s new girlfriend, and they similarly torment her.
The Lodge (2019) makes lovely use of snow field desolation and the lodge itself is nestled on a frozen river inset in some trees. Picture postcards like The House of Usher or Overlook Lodge with rustic homeliness and loneliness of being trapped by memory. The children are imprisoned with the love of their departed mother and Grace with her illness and cult terrors lock them both on a collision course.
The ensemble actors all work wonders with very subtle moments especially building the relationship or attempted togetherness between Grace and the children. Alicia Silverstone almost steals the show in her poignant brief screen time as the beleaguered self-destructive mother. Even when gone her images haunt the place in video, photos, and the faces of the children.
The Lodge (2019) digs or plows the snow for its terrors much like The Haunting (1963) and The Innocents (1961) with a sprinkling of the malevolent The Bad Seed (1956). The memories within walls of the past tear down the present. This is not a story of supernatural evil but the cruelty that children can do.
Review by Terry Sherwood
THE LODGE is available on Blu-ray, DVD and to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the USA