phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2020

The Lodge



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2019
Runtime: 1h 48min
Country: UK, USA, Canada
Language: English
Genre Tags: Drama, Horror, Mystery
Plot Summary: A soon-to-be stepmom is snowed in with her fiancé's two children at a remote holiday village. Just as relations begin to thaw between the trio, some strange and frightening events take place.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: The slowest of burns. Two children and the stepmother they hate are trapped in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Great idea, dad! Filmed in the coldest way, literally and thematically, it may be hard to be emotionally invested in this story, but that third star is specifically for Riley Keough's excellent performance as she sinks deeper and deeper into madness.


Outside Reviews:

Monica Castillo
3 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

Overall, Franz and Fiala perhaps play things a little too safe with The Lodge, not straying too far from a formula they know has already worked before. The Lodge is more disturbing than scary, with its eerie ambiance and chilling plot handling most of the scares. The film's terrors come not from an outside or supernatural force but the cruelty that even children can carry.


A.A. Dowd
Grade: B - Christmas comes late with the subzero horror and creeping religious dread of The Lodge

Though it bears the logo of Hammer, the famous U.K. production house that kept Dracula and his gothic kin in theaters through the '70s, The Lodge is in keeping with contemporary trends in slow-burn horror. That means lots of atonal skitters, ominously empty rooms, and a camera that moves at a creep and stays at an almost accusatory distance. Were they not probably developed simultaneously, one might accuse the film of biting the artisanal gooseflesh style of Hereditary; note the inciting shock of bereavement and dollhouse motif. In truth, The Lodge might have benefitted from a little of Ari Aster's crooked sense of humor. There's the shadow of a dark cringe comedy in Grace's inability to win over these sad, sullen brats, but it's suffocated by the relentless, grey-blue mood of despair Fiala and Franz establish and never once deviate from. Still, as a thriller about bone-deep religious anxiety, it's admirably oppressive - in no small part thanks to Keough, who's fast becoming a pro at pulling viewers into the sphere of her spooky dissociative calm.