THE LODGE / CERT:TBC / DIRECTORS: VERONIKA FRANK, SEVERIN FIALA / SCREENPLAY: SEVERIN FIALA, SERGIO CASCI / STARRING: RILEY KEOUGH, JAEDEN MARTELL, LIA MCHUGH, RICHARD ARMINIUTAGE, ALICIA SILVERSTONE / RELEASE DATE: TBC
You’re probably dead inside – or at least a bit rotten – if the sight of the name ‘Hammer’ on the credits of a feature film doesn’t elicit a little tingle in the nether regions. We’re a long way from the glory days of the Studio That Dripped Blood in the 1960s, and we try not to think too often of its sad decline into TV sitcom spin-off hell in the 1970s (although Holiday on the Buses does have its admirers at STARBURST HQ). But, despite a six-year absence since the last film to display the familiar evocative Hammer logo (2014’s insipid The Woman in Black sequel Angel of Death) it’s genuinely heartening to see the name live on in The Lodge, a bleak and claustrophobic psychological horror film perfectly suited for these difficult lockdown times.
The Lodge is, in fact, possibly a bit too bleak for its own good, a stifling chamber piece full of unrelentingly troubled characters trapped in their own very personal Hells even as they find themselves trapped and isolated and cut off from civilization. Richard Armitage plays Richard Hall, an investigative writer who takes his new girlfriend Grace (Keough), the sole survivor of a Christian cult mass suicide, and his two young children Aiden (Martell) and Mia (McHugh), from his failed first marriage to a remote country lodge to celebrate Christmas. Here he hopes that the children will start to forge a bond with Grace but when he is called away on business Grace, and the kids find themselves alone in the lodge trying to make the best of things. A ferocious snowstorm leaves them cut off and isolated. Suddenly, Grace’s medication, all their food supplies and even Grace’s pet dog go missing. Grace begins a slow descent into confusion and despair tumbling into a complete breakdown when all the clocks in the house advance to January 9th and the kids find newspaper cuttings chronicling their apparent deaths from monoxide poisoning. Is Grace mad, or is something a little more sinister going on in the cold and forbidding lodge?
A barrel of laughs this ain’t. The film signposts its intention to unsettle us in its first few minutes in one genuine jump-in-your-seat moment (the rest of the film delivers far subtler chills, though). As Richard tries to gently build bridges and ease his new family forward, we’re waiting for things to start heading south and take a turn for the worse. But this is no cheap supernatural shlock; what’s happening in the Lodge is deeply psychological, cruel and unpleasant and for a while, we’re not sure where our sympathies should lie or even where they are being directed. By the time the truth is revealed the situation has become too horrible and too irrevocable and the film’s last ten minutes are probably the darkest and most nihilistic we’ve seen since The Mist way back in 2007. If you like a bit of hope and optimism in your movies, then you’ll need to look elsewhere.
Too dark and downbeat for many tastes, The Lodge will be nothing if not an acquired taste, and it’ll be best appreciated by those who prefer their horror films a little less predictable and a bit more dark-hearted.
