The Lodge
THE LODGE - NEON
Veronika Franz’s and Severin Fiala’s The Lodge is a tense and chilling horror experience that derives true terror from its cold, disorienting blizzard location and cabin-fever paranoia that can result from being trapped with forces of darkness. Through its careful plotting and deliberately underplayed series of reveals, the film transforms a positively mundane and realistic family drama into a disturbing existential meditation on the pitfalls of religion, fanaticism and the afterlife, and whether or not one can truly repent for their earthly sins. Though the film displays flourishes of artistic prowess behind and in front of the camera, the story ventures into problematic territory with its minor discussions of the role mental health plays in religious fanaticism; ultimately opting for a surface-level exploration of its highly religious themes.
Riley Keough delivers a mesmerising performance as Grace, a young woman with a troubled and cult-related past, who decides to spend the Christmas holiday in a remote, snowy cabin with her fiancée’s (Richard Armitage) children (Jaeden Martell and Lia McHugh), who have recently experienced a family tragedy and want nothing to do with her. After arriving at the cabin, they find themselves confronted with snowstorms, food and water shortages, power outages and an inexplicable, looming presence of darkness that seeks to terrorize and destroy them.
The film’s visual aesthetic is as emotionally cold as its story and characters, providing a nervous and dark energy that really pushes the story into mental obscurity. At times, the frame is too darkly lit and the action onscreen becomes literally unclear, but the contrast of the dark of night against the bright snow makes for some fittingly jarring imagery. The film succeeds most in its cinematic look, which supplements a terrifying but surprisingly lightweight narrative.
Throughout the film, there is a slowly rising sense of paranoia and tension that never fully resolves. Franz and Fiala deliberately subvert expectations by underplaying every dramatic beat, as well as delivering each twist and reveal with little fanfare. The horror stems from the fragile and often twisted nature of human psychology and succeeds in being frightening by actualising the horror through the actions of its characters. Much of the story is told from Keough’s dead-eyed perspective, which gives the film a disorienting and unstable quality and allows an unreliable narrator to further the rising tension by forcing the viewer to question their reality. Despite the film’s undeniable cleverness in the use of its characters, the actual story beats are a bit disappointing and predictable; the low-key nature of each cinematic reveal robs the story of the thematic weight it so desperately strives for.
As an exploration of religion, delusion and mental health, The Lodge suffers greatly because it fails to find nuance within these themes. The narrative consistently fails to rise above the standard conventions of the popular horror genre and offers a highly reductive religious fantasy narrative that has very little to say about its themes. As a character study, it works to some degree, as every character’s actions have dire consequences and Keough delivers a menacing and layered performance of her written character; as a meaningful story, it prioritises entertainment over theme and is thus reduced to standard early-year horror fare. The Lodge is a competently-helmed and often truly horrifying experience that features great performances but lacks expertise and nuance in its storytelling. Thus, it becomes a dry and dull horror experience that fails to understand how to properly utilize its many potentially compelling ideas.
THE LODGE is released February 7th 2020
