Formula: The Shining / Hereditary
I admit, it's unfair to call The Lodge an
imitator. I suspect its development happened separate from what A24's up to. I
wouldn't be surprised if the screenplay preceded those other film's releases.
It sure fits the trend though. It's got the tragic opening of Midsommar,
the dollhouse of Hereditary, and a thematically similar ending to The
Witch. It has all the pieces of a movie that was reverse-engineered to fit
a trend, even if it's all coincidence. And that's fine with me.
The Lodge is
about a young woman, Grace (Riley Keough), and her future step-children (Jaeden
Martell, Lia McHugh) stuck in an isolated cabin during a snowstorm. The
children's father left their mother for Keough and they aren't pleased with
this thanks to some especially severe fallout from the breakup. The father has
to leave for business for a couple days and hopes a few days alone with Grace
with help her bond with the kids. Pretty soon after he leaves though, the
electricity goes out in the cabin and everyone's stuff goes missing, including
Grace's dog. Oh, and I forgot to mention. Grace grew up in a cult and was the
only survivor of a mass suicide when she was 12. Needless to say, she's got
issues, and this event isn't helping things. The scares in the movie are in
everyone's response to this situation and the mystery around what happened.
I still don't have an opinion of Riley Keough,
despite the fact that she's been in a number of movies I've liked. She's even
showed good range. The Lodge has her working where she's most
comfortable though. She's good at underplaying, and sort of has that Kristen
Stewart thing where she always seems a little tired. It works for the dreary,
cold atmosphere of the movie. I'm ever closer to having a real opinion about
Keough as a performer (I'm definitely pro-Keough). This was certainly a mark in
her favor. Alicia Silverstone plays the mother of the children. It's a small
role, but it's the best thing I've seen with her in years. The kids and father
were fine.
The movie builds the tension well. Everything about
it looks and feels cold. It probably helped that my theater was uncommonly cold
to begin with. It doesn't overrely on religious imagery for scares. The movie
clocks in at only a little over 1h30m, which is my ideal horror movie length.
Ultimately, it lost me toward the end when it started to provide answers that were
very underwhelming. That didn't erase the effectiveness of the first 2/3s of it
though, which means this was a success in my book.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
After the Credits
I don't understand a lot of the character decisions
in this movie. So, the kids hide all the stuff, then try to trigger Grace to
have a mental breakdown. I get that, but what was the plan exactly and why did
they stick to it for so long? I feel like as soon as they awake to her in a
trance, standing over the son with a gun, they'd be ready to drop the charade.
Or how about when Grace decided to travel into the snow on her own? Were they
just cool with the idea that she'd go off and freeze to death? It sure was
convenient for the plot that she happens to get turned around and ends up back
at the house. To use my standard parlance, this majorly fails my "One Big
Leap" test. I'm pretty sure the inciting coincidence should be the father
inexplicably leaving them alone in a harsh and isolated environment or the fact
that Grace was the lone survivor from a mass cult suicide.
The movie never judges the children for how truly
awful they are to Grace either. Early on, I believed Grace was going crazy on
her own. It transitioned from that to fearing for the children without ever
taking a beat to indict the children's actions. That undercut a lot of the
investment I'd made into any character.
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