Bleak and affecting, The Lodge is the latest in a string of “domestic horror” films released in recent years.
As the fall season wears on, I’ve found myself wondering what affect the pandemic will have on the horror fiction of the next several years. There is already pandemic-horror, of course, but it doesn’t seem likely that the reaction to our global crisis will simply be more zombie movies. One possibility, as our time quarantined with family draws further and further on, is that we will see a flood of what I’m calling “domestic horror” films. Over the last several years a handful of filmmakers have looked towards the relationships between parent and child for inspiration (The Babadook, Hereditary), or between spouses (You Should Have Left), or both (Vivarium). This style of film is uniformly quiet, and intense, and bleak. Historically, horror has used moments of levity and joy to counterbalance the scares, the proverbial party that is crashed by the mayhem-causing antagonist. In domestic horror, the non-horror elements heavily involve grief and tension, so that there is no relief from the onslaught of bad times. Any supernatural or traditionally horror-like elements simply serve to heighten the darkness that already exists in these people’s lives. The Lodge doesn’t add anything new to the vocabulary of this burgeoning micro-genre, but it reaches its ghastly potential far more effectively than, say, Vivarium was able to do.
The theme of the movie is about the inherent distrust that step-children can feel towards their biological parent’s replacement, and how that distrust can be reflected back at them. The three main characters, who share the vast majority of the screen together without interruption, are two sullen children and their dad’s girlfriend, spending a few days stranded in the titular lodge during a snowstorm. The film is far from action-packed, but it does deliver emotional gut punches early and often, so it is hard to outline the story with any more detail than the Amazon thumbnail description without spoiling something. Once the plot mechanics kick in, there are only a handful of possible explanations for what is going on, and the script is clever enough to suggest that all of them are a possibility before the truth is finally revealed in the third act. Then, it is unflinching enough to play that scenario out to its most dire conclusion. Despite boasting two directors, the film has a very consistent visual style that never lets the pressure up, and its sparse score is used to great effect when a jolt of dread is called for. There are a few quibbles – some exposition about the girlfriend’s past is delivered in a clunky manner, a dollhouse motif feels tacked on without purpose, the father willingly leaving the three alone in the secluded lodge without a vehicle for days rings false – but I found that the film delivered the dread and disorientation that it needed to before the intense finale. Like many of the films of its ilk, I don’t know that I’ll return to the The Lodge at any point in the near future. The unrelenting emotional toil that these movies put you through makes them the antithesis of a popcorn flick. Yet I won’t soon forget it, even if I never watch it again, and that is the mark of success for a movie like this.
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