Starring: Riley Keough, Jaeden Martell, Lia McHugh, Richard Armitage, Alicia Silverstone
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 108 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2020
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Throughout ‘The Lodge’, the careful yet confident restraint of directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala fills the titular holiday home with genuine menace. They also pull a naturalistic performance from game leading lady Riley Keough, who stars as a young woman with a troubled past driven to question her reality, which deepens the film’s pervading dread. Though the film’s screenplay doesn’t quite live up to the standards set by their direction, this remains an effectively low-key and thought-provoking little shocker.
Six months after the suicide of his estranged wife (Alicia Silverstone), Richard (Richard Armitage) announces to his children, teenage Aidan (Jaeden Martell) and young Mia (Lia McHugh), that he has invited his girlfriend Grace (Riley Keough) to spend Christmas with them. Though Mia is mute on the matter, Aidan reacts poorly – he knows that his Dad moving on and taking up with a new partner was the driving force behind his Mum’s suicide.
Aidan and Mia also know that Grace is potentially bad news, the subject of one of their Dad’s non-fiction books about a Christian cult previously led by Grace’s father. I say “previously” because Grace’s father led his followers to commit mass suicide, leaving a young Grace as the sole survivor. Given her background, the kids have to wonder if Grace is dangerous – more fodder for their burgeoning dislike and distrust of their would-be stepmother.
Nevertheless, the spectacularly tone-deaf Richard bundles them all off to the family lodge for Christmas, before heading back to the city solo, leaving his offspring and potentially crazed bride-to-be alone in their isolated and soon to be snowed in cabin. Whether it’s all the religious imagery left in the lodge by Richard’s devoutly Catholic former wife or something more sinister, things soon take a turn for the creepy when the trio’s belongings, food and fuel disappear overnight. Her medication among the missing goods, Grace’s hold on reality begins to slip, and stuck in the chalet with the two kids, things go south quickly.
From the get-go, the children’s reactions suggest that there’s something funny going on with Grace, and Franz and Fiala do their bit to promote their theory, using effective blocking and clever shooting angles to completely hide Grace’s face from view throughout early scenes. This makes Riley Keough’s eventual reveal more powerful, and her natural, relaxed performance cleverly undercuts much of this early suspicion. Her normalcy Though Jaeden Martell isn’t especially convincing as Richard’s eldest child (he’s too deliberate, too solemn for a teen), Lia McHugh’s amazing aptitude for spouting waterworks, be they funereal or terrified, does more than enough to pick up the slack.
The film’s design also fuels this bubbling fear and paranoia. The titular lodge is creepy and oppressive, its wooden walls laden with crucifixes and saintly icons bearing down on the characters. The script tangentially works in a creepy dollhouse too, a recent trend in horror cinema notable in titles like ‘Annabelle: Creation’ and ‘Hereditary’, which cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis (Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos’ regular collaborator) captures with impressively detailed macro photography.
Despite the eerie, gothic atmosphere that Franz and Fiala so carefully create, their screenplay (co-written with Sergio Casci) pushes the movie towards the exact territory that you hope it will avoid, becoming a bit too manipulative, literal and unbelievable to stick the landing, even turning to some unfortunate jump scares. Though the third act twist (which is either ill-advised or undercooked, depending on how you feel about the preceding hour) doesn’t completely demolish the goodwill generated in the lead-up, it does diminish it. That said, the prevailing impression is left by Franz and Fiala’s strong direction, not their so-so writing. In other words, Grace’s trip to this lodge might have been hellish, but for the right audiences, it will be an unexpected treat.
Callum Ryan is an associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting.
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