Hey, THE LODGE is a horror film with a chilly snowbound setting so how can it not be fun? I'll tell you how; it also happens to be one of those new-fangled emotionally torturous artsy flicks that make you feel like you're losing your mind. You know the drill, fifty percent of the audience is going to find it brilliant, the other half will claim it's boring and I'm going to end up hiding under a blanket tormented by suicidal thoughts and a feeling of incompleteness because I do not maintain an exact replica of my home in dollhouse form. Honestly, I don't need this bad mojo right now, mid-to-late February is not the time to be playing around with crazy-making, mind-fuck flicks concerning isolation, damnation, purgatory and pet death, especially when said movie's runtime is approximately forever-ish.
Don't get me wrong, THE LODGE is basically a masterpiece when it comes to delivering waves and waves of impenetrable unease but so is every social media site I'm actively trying to avoid. I get it, you win, THE LODGE! You successfully made me feel like garbage for three days and counting- are ya happy now? Maybe you should just change your name to "HEREDITARY, HOLD MY BEER" Folks, I can't tell you how many nineties-era sitcoms with jaunty theme songs I had to watch just to regain a thimble full of equilibrium.
THE LODGE concerns a family who (for reasons I'll never understand) celebrate Thanksgiving by hanging plastic roasted turkey ornaments outside and donning plastic roasted turkey hats. In other words, they are insane and are born to be insanity magnets and attract insanity wherever they go. Perhaps the only rational person presented is the mother played by the never lovelier, ALICIA SILVERSTONE who taps out of the nightmare universe this movie conjures as quickly as possible (via blowing her brains out). The empathy-free father decides a good way to celebrate Christmas with his two grief-stricken children is to force them into spending the holiday with his fiance/mistress who just happens to be the emotionally fragile, lone surviving member of a death cult- and her dog Grady who is clearly named after the psycho caretaker in THE SHINING. After a near-death experience on a frozen lake, pop gets a call from work and supposes it's totally cool to leave his children with someone they barely know and hold directly responsible for their mother's early departure from this mortal coil. One evening, the trio makes the questionable decision to watch THE THING (1982) and JACK FROST (1998) back to back and for their folly wake up trapped in a purgatory chuck full of eerie occurrences that may or may not be hallucinations and a nonstop parade of ominous omens.
There are a couple of images in THE LODGE that I will likely drag with me to the grave and I don't appreciate that. When it comes to choosing sides on the verdict of "boring" or "brilliant", I'm going to have to begrudgingly lean toward "brilliant" simply because there were times during this movie in which I feared I myself might be dead and I had to resist the urge to stand up and scream until I was assisted out of the building. That said, I can't imagine a scenario where I would ever subject myself to watching this movie again. It may have to be filed in the cursed movie file in my head along with DER TODESKING ('90) and V.I. WARSHAWSKI ('91). Then again, maybe I could watch this movie in the summer during a completely different mental state and find joy in its fragrant symbolism and wrecking ball pessimism. It should be said that that the performances in this movie are all top-notch. RILEY KEOUGH, as tortured Grace, compellingly rides a razor blade between sympathetic and off-putting and LIA McCUGH, as Mia, is heartbreaking and should be a shoo-in to play a young FLORENCE PUGH if there's ever a MIDSOMMAR prequel.
I ultimately give this movie props for mercilessly ruffling my psychological feathers just as it intended to but can't argue with anyone who finds it manipulative and heavy-handed as well. Love it or lump it, I think everyone can agree it's a painful watch and a kick in the shins reminder that perhaps the only order to this world is the order you construct yourself. Now I'm off to punish myself further by watching the hell that is JACK FROST. It's what I deserve. I must repent!
Sooooo….you begrudgingly thought it brilliant, even though you'll never watch it again, found it manipulative and heavy-handed….even though it's a masterpiece, even though the runtime felt like "forever-ish". Sounds like you love it for making you hate it.
robstercraws,
Exactly.
I'm caught in a bad romance.
I should also add that it's both highly unique and shamefully derivative.
Is it art or is it abusive media? I'll never know.
I want to buy the Blu-ray and bury it in the backyard.
Despite that decidedly bipolar review, I remain very eager to watch this one. Then again…I'm a big fan of "high-falutin' horror", so…..
Thank you for this public service announcement. No thank you. Not now. The first season of IT'S A LIVING is on Prime.
robstercraws,
Bi-polar is on the nose. also: I love me some "high-falutin"/"new-fangled" horror as well (maybe that's not the right term but the horror mafia will kill me if I use "elevated" or "prestige" and I have to describe it somehow). I honestly can't wait for Aunt John to see it so that I can pick his brain because he's a huge Ari Aster fan. It is really odd to me that this movie also uses a miniature dollhouse device- I love it- but I would think that would be way too identified with Hereditary for somebody to use it again so soon. Anyway…
You may very well enjoy this and I hope you report back once you see it. I should also clarify that when I say forever-ish I don't mean the actual runtime but what it FEELS like because of the extended period of masochistic psychological torture. I really just wanted to escape at one point. I guess it reminded me of IRREVERSIBLE in that regard which I think is genius but also so very painful to endure. I'm either getting wimpy in my old age or I've just experienced too much real life as trauma lately to properly digest it.
Ben S,
You are the one with the PSA telling me that IT'S A LIVING is on prime. You may have just saved my poor soul. I do think this is worth seeing at some point but only when you have peak psychological armor.
Holy shit, Unk…..now I HAVE to see this! Your Irreversible comparison clinched it! Gaspar Noe's film is one of the few I've seen in my adult life that gave me the same kind of "dreading-what-comes-next" feeling that I had when I saw The Shining and Night of the Living Dead when I was ten. If The Lodge comes even close to giving me that feeling, then I'll have found the "fix" I get from only one out of a hundred horror films!
The dollhouse thing is kind of odd though. Almost like they're trying to link to Ari Aster purposely.
Robstercraws,
Oh good! I hope it plays near year you. It's sad it's not advertised more. I just randomly saw it on the marquee when I went to see something else. It's different from IRREVERSIBLE in that it works more on the fear of going crazy/losing your mind than the fear of actual physical violence but if you are a big fan of THE SHINING then you are already half way there- total cabin fever film (in the tradition sense). Hope I didn't oversell but I'm STILL thinking about it a week later and that's gotta tell ya something.
I lucked out. An arthouse cinema nearby just happened to be playing it on the one free day I had. I actually just got back from seeing it, and all I can say is……wooooooooow! That. Was. Intense. The acting….fantastic (especially the little girl)! The cinematography….outstanding (did you notice how, after a certain point, every shot of Riley Keough was off-kilter?). The sound design….skin-crawling! I was LITERALLY on the edge of my seat for most of the run time and still have the weird marks on my butt to prove it. I honestly didn't notice anything overly derivative about it except maybe the dollhouse thing and being snowbound as a plot device, but that's being nitpicky. Personally, I would recommend this film to anyone who likes intense, emotional, well-made films that just happen to be horror. I loved it.
I was confused about one or two things though. Could I possibly shoot an email to see what you thought? I ended up seeing it by myself, so didn't have a chance to ask anyone else.
!!!! That's awesome!!! Yes! thanks for bringing up the sound design- when that church music starts super LOUD …its maddening. Yep! Send me an email at kindertrauma@gmal.com!