The Night House
2021
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Led by an impressive Riley Keough performance, The Lodge should prove a suitably unsettling destination for fans of darkly atmospheric horror. Read Critics Reviews
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Feb 7, 2020 · Reviews. The Lodge. Monica Castillo February 07, 2020. Tweet. Now streaming on: Powered by JustWatch. In movies, stepmothers always seem to have a rough go at joining a new family. They tend to be the villains of a story, arbiters of cruelty and unwanted change, a character perhaps best personified by Disney’s “Cinderella.”
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Feb 3, 2020 · The Lodge Review: 2020’s First Great Horror Film. Reviews. By Eric Eisenberg. published 3 February 2020. The Lodge (2020) deals. $5.99. /mth. View. at Hulu. One of the best feelings you...
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- A slow-burn with a cold.
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By Tom Jorgensen
Updated: Dec 17, 2020 10:26 pm
Posted: Feb 6, 2020 9:00 pm
Pulling off slow-burn storytelling is no easy feat, but it’s especially tricky in horror. The genre has a lot of options for filmmakers looking to keep audiences engaged and on edge, but when the focus is on slowly building dread and forgoing a sensory overload approach, it’s important to tell your story clearly and pay that patience off throughout. When it’s done right, we get movies like The Shining and Hereditary. When things go wrong, we get something like The Lodge, directed by the duo behind 2014’s Goodnight Mommy, which has atmosphere to spare and a trio of able performers simmering in its pot, but confused themes and a lack of tension keep the film from boiling over the way those other slow-burn standards do.
Siblings Aidan (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh) are coping with some big, traumatic changes in their lives. Their mother Laura (Alicia Silverstone) has recently committed suicide and their father (Richard Armitage) has moved swiftly on to a new romantic interest. Grace (Riley Keough) tries to bond with Aidan and Mia, but she quickly finds there’s little common ground there. Then, family-fueled trauma is nothing new for Grace: she’s the sole survivor of a Jonestown-esque mass suicide event presided over by her cult leader dad. Richard thinks the key to getting these two camps to gel is by forcing them to spend time alone at a remote lodge together. But of course, the snow flies, the power dies, and Grace and the kids are left to fend for themselves. No power and heat is one thing, but increasingly inexplicable events force Grace and the kids to consider whether the nature of their isolation may be more sinister.
The remote Massachusetts cabin where most of the film takes place provides a strong setting for the film’s naturalistic cinematography. Muted light reflecting off the snow and shadows playing off rich wood-paneled walls, from which Laura’s religious icons loom, give the film a grounded feel. The visuals and similarly strong score could’ve been potent assets to telling an intense, claustrophobic story had the film done a better job figuring out what it was trying to say.
Fans of Goodnight, Mommy know that directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala like to play with their audience’s sympathies toward their characters. At various times throughout, The Lodge asks you to put aside your feelings towards the kids in favor of Grace, and vice versa. The problem with that here is that ask becomes harder and harder to accept, given how erratic and violent Grace becomes. Aidan and Mia are presented for most of the film as genuinely good kids, so when they cross a line in how they’re dealing with Grace, it feels indicative of a mean streak the movie has, out of character, and engineered to keep the story interesting. It’s not the only time in the film Franz and Fiala’s hands are visible moving pieces into place - convenient snowstorms and choices with ill-defined motivation keep The Lodge feeling like something you’re watching, not something you’re particularly drawn into. Speaking of Goodnight, Mommy, The Lodge shares a certain amount of DNA with Franz and Fiala’s debut, to the point where parts of this story may feel like a rehash of that less seen Austrian film. While they may enjoy playing with the motif of distrust between parent and child, Franz and Fiala retread a lot of the same thematic ground here as they did in Goodnight, Mommy.
None of that should be considered a knock against Keough’s centerpiece performance in The Lodge. Keough plays Grace with a shyness and fragility that holds firm in her initial good faith attempts to bond with Aidan and Mia, all the way through her breakdown at the lodge. Impressively, despite Grace’s pretty terrible babysitting skills, Keough keeps Grace from feeling like someone to root against, even if you won’t be sure why you’d want to root for her. Likewise, Jaeden Martell and Lia McHugh hold their own as Grace’s wards. Martell brings intelligence and sensitivity to his watchful big brother, traits which may evoke comparisons to his turn as Bill Denbrough in IT: Chapter One. McHugh gets the heavier emotional lifting. Mia is clearly devastated by the loss of their mother, clinging to a doll that resembles her, and McHugh does an impressive job when the film calls for her to let us see that pain. Keough, Martell, and McHugh’s interplay is the backbone of The Lodge, and if the three of them weren’t working as hard as they are, the whole film may have collapsed. Richard Armitage has very little to do, other than strand the leads together at his cabin. Alicia Silverstone gets even less screen time and considering her brief appearance teases a really interesting foil to Grace, her absence feels particularly disappointing as the film goes on.
Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s The Lodge strands a trio of capable actors in a beautifully shot house full of crucifixes and ghosts of the past, but devoid of much in the way of tension or drama. The story’s turns feel designed to mislead for the plot’s sake and distract from the more interesting character work, like Grace’s struggle with her h...
Feb 7, 2020 · Parents need to know that The Lodge is a horror/thriller movie about sinister things happening to two kids and their soon-to-be-stepmother while they're stuck in a remote, snowbound lodge. Violence includes guns and shooting, characters dying/dead bodies shown (including a frozen dog), blood spatters/trails,….
Feb 7, 2020 · Metascore Generally Favorable Based on 31 Critic Reviews. 64. User Score Generally Favorable Based on 93 User Ratings. 6.1. My Score. Hover and click to give a rating. Add My Review. Where to Watch. iTunes ($3.99) All Watch Options. View All. Riley Keough. Grace. Jaeden Martell. Aiden Hall. Lia McHugh. Mia Hall. Richard Armitage. Richard Hall.
