Checked out a new suspense (maybe horror) movie called The Lodge. I hadn’t seen a trailer but I had seen that some reviewers were calling it the best horror movie of the year and others the worst movie of the year (regardless of genre). So I went in not knowing what to expect at all. What I got was a slow burn art-house horror film that forgot the suspense, certainly forgot the scares, and forgot to even burn anything as part of that slow burn.
The Lodge is about a father and his two kids… their mom has recently committed suicide after dad said they needed to finalize their divorce. Now he’s marrying the woman who split them up in the first place and the kids aren’t happy. Probably because they found dad’s book research on their new step-mom… she is the only survivor of a suicide cult. And dad wants them to go to a lodge over Christmas so she can get to know the kids (dad will be working until Christmas day). Seems like a bad idea… and things do – slowly – start to go south… and the audience is left to wonder if she’s crazy, or if the kids are up to something, or if there’s something external and supernatural going on…. maybe something from her occult past.
And boy does it take a LONG time to get some answers. And credit to the attempt at making a slow, deliberate mood piece set in a frozen, desolate landscape. But I don’t think any of it works. A slow burn is fine… it requires patience but if there’s reward in the wait, then that’s great. But so little happens for so long in this film… and when it does, it feels even more drawn out and unsatisfying. And the characters have only one personality: mopey. The actors mope and gloom their way through every scene, rarely showing any other emotions, personality, or interests.
When the movie’s quantum wave function collapses and we actually learn what’s going on… well… it isn’t a reveal so much as a thing that casually happens. I was left saying, “wait… so one of my theories was right but the movie is treating it as casually and mopey as everything else that’s happened?” Jeesh… I can live with a scary movie not having an indulgence of melodrama or jump scares, but this movie barely gives a shit about it’s own reveal. So why should I?
I respect what they were trying to do for an agonizingly long time in this film, but none of it worked for me. I can imagine people with, I dunno.. more patience? more introspecting? enjoying this or at least being able to get into what it’s laying down. But it’s not for me. There are other, better slow burn horror movies like Hereditary, Misommar, or The Witch that find a way to work while being quiet and introspective… this one didn’t.
Score: 68