Yve Watches #TheLodge [Massive SPOILERS]

/ October 15, 2019

The Lodge has finally come to Europe. Fellow fan Yve who is a regular commenter here on this blog, went to a screening of the film last weekend and has offered to write a summary and review of the film for those of us who won’t get to see this film – or who would like to know more about the film without having to subject themselves to a horror movie. I am going to post Yve’s review below the cut. The text is all hers, I have only added a few pictures for illustration.

Beware – the following text is a summary of the film and contains MASSIVE SPOILERS! Do not read if you are planning to watch the film yourself. For those who are hesitant about horror content: The summary and review are safe to read imo. Here comes the cut.

Once more: massive spoilers ahead. I am going to mark the review bits in italics and leave the summary bits in regular font.

The evening started promisingly, the film makers Veronika Franz and Severin Faila were present and came out on stage to announce a Q & A after the showing. The writer was also in the audience, we applauded.

Sadly the film did not live up to my expectations.

The film starts off well, the wife’s heart breaks when she realises her marriage is over and her husband wants a divorce – felt real. The little girl, Mia was disconsolate after her mother committed suicide but the father completely failed to comfort her, after stroking her hair in a repetitive and robotic manner she shrugs him off and tells him to leave (which he did). Poorly done Richard.

Six months later and the children still haven’t accepted their father’s new girlfriend Grace; and are horrified at the prospect of spending Christmas in a remote lodge. Richard knows Grace’s past and we see scenes after the mass suicide, we see the shrouded bodies with tape over their mouths and hear voices crying out ‘repent’.

The atmosphere in the lodge is strained and Richard’s attempts to jolly them along are pretty pathetic, he says Grace is a bad cook so they can all eat junk (I wondered if this was a RA ad lib)

Outside Richard urges the children to have ‘fun’ but he doesn’t play with them, he shovels a little snow which is completely futile. Grace walks across the snowy frozen lake supported by two wooden poles using them as crutches, when she goes too close to a fishing hole she falls in. Richard hauls her out.

Richard has to leave the lodge to return to work (honestly no one in their right mind would leave this sad bunch together and I kept hoping this was some plan to test Grace, no such luck, he was just an idiot) But before he goes he gives Grace a revolver and gives her a shooting lesson, however she doesn’t need it as she is an expert. Amazingly Richard doesn’t ask her any questions about her prowess.

Aidan and Mia look into Grace’s mysterious past on the web and prove to be very clever; they ‘mock up’ a newspaper report of their collective deaths. Now we move into a part when items start to disappear, all the food from the fridge, their warm clothes and the Christmas decorations disappear. The generator fails and they rely on a log fire for heat. Grace is busy popping pills but when Aidan fakes his suicide by hanging, Grace is tipped over the edge.

There are lots of religious paintings and crucifixes around the lodge which seem to bother Grace. She removes them then puts them back, very tedious.

Eventually Grace decides to leave the lodge and walk to the nearest town! She sets off covered in a carpet, remember the coats have disappeared. She comes across a weird three storey derelict house which she can’t enter, gives up and carries on to find, surprise surprise, she is back at the lodge.

Back at home we see Richard staring into a dolls house where an effigy hangs from the ceiling. He is unable to contact anyone by phone so he drives back to the lodge; a convenient snowplough clears a path.

The children are cowering in the attic while Grace stomps around screaming loudly. Richard tries to talk to her as she is threatening to kill herself, she holds the gun to her head but the hammer falls onto an empty chamber, then she points the gun at Richard and shoots him neatly through the heart.

If RA did the stunt of falling down the stairs he did it very well.

The children try to escape but cannot start the car, Grace stands in front of the vehicle and they meekly return to the lodge and quietly sit at the dining table with their dead father. Grace starts to sing in a thin reedy voice, eventually the children join in, and this seemed to go on forever!

Grace then tapes their mouths shut with parcel tape with the word ‘sin’ written on it. She does the same to herself then the camera settles on the revolver on the table. The End.

A third of the audience stampeded for the exits before the Q & A and I heard one man complain crossly that he had driven four hours for THAT!

In my opinion the film lacked emotion; the viewer should have been made to care what happened to the children. The film was short on jeopardy and suspense leaving only a sense of inevitability. Perhaps this was the filmmakers’ intention but it didn’t make for a good film.

Many thanks to Yve for writing this up for us. I found it really interesting – because I am a total scaredy cat and am no way able to sit through a horror movie. Reading the plot on the page, however, was insightful and didn’t scare me at all. It also meant that I finally understood what a lot of reviewers have said about the various plot twists. It has also made clear to me that Richard’s role in this was probably just supportive – sounds as if he is not present for most of the action, even if he is somehow the instigator of the horror (by bringing his children together with his fiancé). Umph – and btw: yet another chaRActer who dies. 😬

Anyway, thank you for your account Yve! Much appreciated.

 

 

 

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32 thoughts on “Yve Watches #TheLodge [Massive SPOILERS]”

  1. Hooray, I can now feel absolute equanimity about me decision not to watch this movie. It sounds like everything I would dislike wrapped in one meat package including another chaRActer 😵.
    Massive thanks to Yve for scouting this for us and for taking the time to review. True fan service IMO!!

    Liked by 3 people

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  3. The End. Whaaat??? I won’t be driving even twenty minutes to see this, should it appear at my local cinema (sorry Richard) I hate unresolved endings or ones where I am left to make up my own mind (hello Sleepwalker!) Whatever conclusion I come to in this instance, it’s a horrible one. The fate of the children doesn’t bear thinking about. 😞
    Thank you for your review, Yve, you’ve saved me time and money…..and the angst of yet another chaRActer dying, but honestly, it sounds like not seeing this particular role is no loss. 🙁

    Liked by 1 person

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    • From the summary of the film it just doesn’t sound like a plot that makes sense. A disengaged father who doesn’t care about the potential trouble that leaving his recently bereaved in the care of his cult-traumatised fiancé could cause? Hm.

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  4. I must say I’ve read a similar account of the film elsewhere and was saddened that yet again, its another lack luster film role for our guy…..I am hoping and praying that The Stranger, on Netflix , will be a much better character and we will see the real Richard Armitage, actor, come to life..

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    • The Stranger is definitely much more up my street in terms of genre and role. But well, Im ok with RA exploring all kinds of roles in all kinds of genres. He’s got me as a fan, anyway, so new genres might garner him new ones…

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    • New genre to explore? Or maybe even the fact that he didn’t have anything else planned? Whatever it may be – I’m sure he’s learnt something. (As long as he doesn’t become an exclusive horror actor, I’m good.)

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    • Yeah I think he likes to explore roles and genres-doesn’t like to stand still and keeps an eye on what’s on trend (imo)
      So that means hopefully he’ll get round to doing a rom com at some point! 😂

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  7. I think I either read or saw an interview where Richard accepted this role without reading the script because he really wanted to work with the director/producers. I wonder if he found it measured up to his expectations in the end. This is going to be a big no for me. Sounds depressing more than scary and it seems like this role extremely pales in comparison to the multi-layers he achieved in his dark but sympathetic portrayal of Dolarhyde. Thanks to Yve for sharing her impression of the film. It’s unusual for me to skip projects of his (the only other one was Wanderlust) but this one I’m adding to the “um…no thanks” list. 😕

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    • I remember that, too, Donna – I think he said it in an interview, possibly at Sundance. And that made me wonder when, what and why he had actually heard from these two obscure Austrian directors. (Obscure in the sense that non-English speaking directors tend not to feature much in Hollywood.) Maybe he was just being his usual, complimentary self – or maybe he has developed into a die-hard horror fan. (Although that seems unlikely to me.)
      You put that perfectly – “multilayers in the dark but sympathetic portrayal of Dolaryhde”. That was exactly the reason why I really enjoyed Hannibal and why I found Dolarhyde such an attractive part. In the case of the horror movie, I am not really intrigued enough to forego my fear of horror…

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  8. Ode to Spoilers

    Oh me, oh my,
    One more chance,
    To watch RA die.
    This time he gets shot,
    It happens a lot.
    What’s so great,
    About dying on screen?
    We’ve seen it before,
    It’s becoming a bore.
    Many thanks to Yve,
    Who shared quite a bit.
    Sounds like I’ll probably skip it.

    Kathy Jones

    Liked by 3 people

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    • Spot on, as usual, Kathy. I’d turn it into a graphic, like I usually do, but with the spoiler… 😂
      Glad to see that the broken hand has not broken your spirit! 🤗

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  10. I must have a high bar for what qualifies as horror because I didn’t think The Lodge was a horror movie. More of a family tragedy with religious themes, but I guess I can understand how the religious overtones can be construed as horrific. 🎃👻🌻

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  11. Just a note about whether we should care about the children: from my limited awareness of the genre of contemporary horror films: one of the tropes that they often play with is the conflict between children as innocent victims (and their value as people who can reflect the horror of the film’s events onto the audience) and the possibility that children are *not* innocent victims (i.e., generic break / thumbing one’s nose at the stereotypes). In this film I felt like the script leaned very hard on the second theme — kids are not innocent — in order to try to make their own horror once they realized what they had caused greater and potentially more relatable. I’m not sure it worked but I suspect that was what was going on.

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