[Panic Fest 2020 Review] The Lodge Left Me With a Feeling of Painful Emptiness

Immediately upon finishing The Lodge, I thought to myself, “Yep. That’s definitely a film from the Goodnight Mommy duo.” Yes, that can sound dismissive...particularly coming from this reviewer, as I did not like Goodnight Mommy. Like, at all. But in some ways, that feature felt like prep work; a kind of blueprint to discover what they’re tremendously talented in: Creating an unwavering and all-consuming feeling of oppression. 

Oppression can come in different forms and our little cabal of characters suffer from a menagerie of them. Let’s start with our cameo performance of Alicia Silverstone as Laura. We’re introduced to her as she tries to apply makeup before crushing despair breaks her seemingly controlled exterior. She’s going through a messy “separation” with Richard (Richard Armitage). It’s a separation in name only, as he is seeing a woman named Grace (Riley Keough). And unbeknownst to her, he’s about to ask for a divorce. 

The way Alicia Silverstone plays this brief scene shows that there’s no small parts. After dropping off the kids at Richard’s place, he asks her to come in. Hope shines in her eyes until she sees the pair of wine glasses Richard moves to the sink with the off-handed comment of, “She’s not here.” He then almost literally crushes her spirit with two phrases. “I want to finalize the divorce,” followed quickly by, “Grace and I are gonna get married.”

A terrifyingly painful smile on her face, Laura processes this news with a one syllable, “...‘kay.” Then she briskly walks out of the house and then out of their lives with a gun in her mouth and a burst of shocking red.  

The two kids, teenager Aidan (Jaden Martell) and ten-year-old Mia (Lia McHugh) already hated the interloper in their lives who, they believe, created the schism between Laura and Richard. Now, though, six months later, they absolutely despise Grace because, in their minds, she killed their mother. Here, directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz stage the deeply religious Laura’s funeral as another form of systematic oppression.

The minister tells the congregation, “Pray that she crosses over to where she needs to go…” This is quickly followed by an absolutely gutted and inconsolable Mia, bawling in bed and screaming, “she can’t go to heaven. She’s not gonna go to heaven, daddy.” Over and over; a paean to a religion that has seemingly dictated their entire life and has failed them when they needed it most. Aidan has a much more succinct and direct response to their dad: “It’s all her fault...You left mom for a psychopath. Fuck you.”

It’s twenty whole minutes before we finally meet the “monster” that destroyed this nuclear family. Grace is quiet and unassuming. She certainly didn’t ask for all of this trauma. Richard drags her (and her adorable puppy Grady) along with the broken family on a Christmas vacation. Grace awkwardly deals with the kids like she’s carefully stepping on eggshells. She’s trying, though, evidenced by the beautifully wrapped Christmas presents she’s hidden in her luggage for each of them.

Grace’s life has also been clouded with oppression: She’s the only surviving member of a death cult that committed mass suicide. It’s left her obviously scarred based on the cinematic telltale sign of the pills she religiously takes. Grace becomes a foil to the children; all three have lost a parent to suicide and found no solace in the religious institutions they grew up with. All three have unbridled anger with no place to direct it.  

Obviously this is a powder keg of pain, anger and emotion that is seemingly one jostle away from an explosion. Such sets the scene for when the uncomfortable little blended family heads to the titular lodge for Christmas, where isolation, snow and pent-up frustrations threaten to destroy them...even before the weirdness begins.

Viewers will probably see a lot of Hereditary in this film. Like that movie, The Lodge focuses on a death of a family member that has rattled the survivors. It’s about grief and trauma and the ways a family can be absolutely toxic and oppressive to each other. Likewise, The Lodge uses dollhouses and immovable dolls as a way of contrasting the characters with the inevitability of their situation.

Cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis, who brought a crisp and clean foreboding sterility to Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer, films this snowy retreat as a desolate landscape; the cramped and twisty lodge front and center, surrounded by pervasive white that threatens to obliterate everything. At times it feels downright alien, particularly in a dream where Grace finds herself asleep on an icy lake that, with the pitch black night, could have been filmed on the moon. . 

Operating in a similar vein to Goodnight Mommy, where the audience’s perceptions might change based on the scene and the interactions, The Lodge is already a divisive film. But the two feel so inextricably essential to one another; as if the directors know the mixed response they received from their Austrian debut and playfully subvert expectations. And that will be the only time I used “playful” in this review because it is bleak in a way that I wasn’t quite expecting.

As in their debut, I immediately understood what was happening from almost the very beginning and yet, unlike in Goodnight Mommy, this knowledge didn’t dampen my appreciation. Because unlike that film, I don’t think the twists, such as they are, matter here. Instead of being used as a “gotcha” moment, the filmmakers use them to examine what makes these characters so utterly broken. 

Obviously, Mia and Aidan harbor such intense animosity for Grace...and from their perspective, I can’t honestly blame them. Grace, meanwhile, shows the clear signs of childhood trauma. Her introversion, inability to cook (she eats so many sandwiches here) and her awkward interactions with other people shows how her cult upbringing has damaged her. She might have a cute puppy and a nice smile, but there’s a darkness sitting just beneath the surface.

Religious symbols simultaneously intrigue and repulse Grace and the set design does everything in its power to rattle her. From the twisty, wood interior of the home to the copious amount of religious iconography decorating the walls to the constant reminder from both the kids, the lodge constantly reminds her she does not belong here. It seems destined to break her uneasy, fragile state.  

But then there’s Richard, the father. He knows the kids hate her. He knows how Grace grew up...Christ, he wrote about her in a book on cults! Still, he puts them together, takes away their only means of transportation and then leaves them alone to fend for themselves. What follows plays out as a tightly coiled tale of surviving trauma and PTSD. Fearing the unknown without trying to understand it. It makes everything so gut-wrenching in its inevitability. 

The Lodge surprisingly affected me and left me with a feeling of emptiness so painful it actually gave me a nightmare. It’s not a perfect movie by any stretch. It could use some editing and the logic police have already been out in force, picking apart its foibles. But it’s that rare movie that succeeded for me in spite of its too-obvious twists. Weeks from now, I won’t think about the flimsy plotting. I’ll think of the empty pit it left in my gut. 

I’ll think about these little broken dolls, playacting at life.