Directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala
Written by Sergio Casci, Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala
Starring Riley Keough, Jaeden Martell, Lia McHugh, Richard Armitage and Alicia Silverstone
MPAA Rating R for disturbing violence, some bloody images, language and brief nudity
Running time: 1 hour and 48 minutes

by Audrey Callerstrom

The Lodge, a psychological horror film, takes place during the most dreadful time of year for anyone living in a winter climate- when the cold is brutal, the winds are aggressive, and the sun, our source of vitality, has been swallowed. It’s maddening and disorienting and it seems to last an eternity. I write this as I sit in my kitchen, overlooking a deck covered in snow, wishing that that it would melt and that I could cut away the clouds by sheer force of will. That sense of isolation is palpable in The Lodge, Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s follow-up to 2014’s Goodnight Mommy. The Lodge begins with a soft introduction to a family going through a divorce: mother Laura (Alicia Silverstone, stone-faced and miscast), teen son Aidan (Jaeden Martell), daughter Mia (Lia McHugh), and father Richard (Richard Armitage). Richard has plans to marry Grace (Riley Keough), who remains an enigma until she appears onscreen nearly 20 minutes into the film. The children reject her outright, favoring the mother and showing hostility to Grace and their dad. Months pass after a tragedy, and Richard wants to bring the children to an isolated family lodge in order for his children to get to know Grace. The kids discover Grace’s dark past, however, revealed through disturbing footage they find online – Grace is the only surviving member of a mass suicide orchestrated by her father, who lead a religious cult. The build of these elements provides a slow burn as Grace, Mia, and Aidan find themselves trapped in the house. Things don’t start to go awry until nearly an hour into the film. The soundtrack is predominantly string instruments, taps, chimes and Grace’s father’s voice repeatedly saying, “Repent your sins.” The film relies on premise and small moments rather than a booming, building score to instill a sense of paranoia. A recurring shot shows Grace in a dark hallway calling into the children’s room, the whole frame lit by the door’s frosted-glass window. Things start to go missing – food, Grace’s dog Grady and Grace’s pills. Phones are inoperable. The fridge is empty. Grace maintains a motherly demeanor, trying to care for her soon-to-be stepchildren, even as the situation turns eerie and dire. One exceptional sequence shows Grace, not properly dressed for the cold (her coat has also gone missing), leaving the lodge to find help, and hallucinating (?) a house with a figure in the window (not unlike last year’s The Lighthouse, which also featured hallucinations and maddening isolation).

Keough is terrific with the role, and the directors enjoy framing her in close-up while keeping other characters at a safe distance. The structure of treating Grace as an “Other” for the film’s first half hour, while intentional, works against it as a whole. The film could have scraped the surface if it spent more time developing Grace. Aside from Keough being the strongest performer (Martell plays it rather blankly, although McHugh is fine), her story and her character is by far the most intriguing. And yet, aside from knowing that she was in a cult, takes meds and loves Grady, we don’t know anything about her. Being subjected to an abusive religious upbringing and witness to a mass suicide becomes her only identity. She is her trauma, and the character deserves better. Think of how a film like Carrie, also about a woman who endured abuse at the hands of a religious zealot, brings you into Carrie’s life and world. Still, the film is effective at building tension, and the filmmakers are clever to not submit to horror tropes or jump-scares, instead relying on setting, darkness, and color, or lack thereof (when things are permanently overcast, everything, even Keough’s blue eyes, look dirty and gray). The Lodge is a worthy, memorable, and well-crafted film, even if it falls short on making Grace its focus.