The Lodge (2020) [SPOILER THREAD]

[wenis]

I'm very serious about this being a spoiler thread. You can't dance around this movie.

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well holy shit. What a movie. I had an inkling what was going on from the jump but then this movie makes you second guess yourself and gets you right back into your assumptions and then jumps over those assumptions and shoots your dad in the face.

what a crazy little movie and what diabolical kids. I thought McCauly Culkin was going to be the defacto evil kid forever in the Good Son, and I know these two kids didn't "mean to take it so far" but Jesus Christ. The girl less so on the evil front, but that boy really knew what was going on there. What the shit. Even when he realized he had gone to far my empathy for his plight went out the window. He watched the same footage like, he knew what that poor woman had been through and I know the kids went through their mothers death (what a surprise to see Alicia Silverstone) but what the fuck. This is a hell of a way to deal with your Grief and anger.

With all that said. Great movie, never want to see it again. Once is enough.

 

[Bookoo]

My GF and I were pretty disappointed.

The whole plot setup was a little ridiculous with the father leaving the kids with this woman they barely know (or like) in a remote cabin without a car.

It built up some tension towards the end, but it was over so quick and the cut to black was obnoxious (our theater groaned/booed)

We both walked out feeling like the director/writer had recently watched Hereditary and figured they could make something like it.

 

[kai3345]

liked it, despite how similar it was to both goodnight mommy and hereditary.

 

[Dan-o]

Bleak as hell. Those kids are assholes, but the dad should have known better not to 1) drag the kids along and 2) leave them all there for days.
Damn good movie but not one I plan to rewatch.

Repent and you will find salvation.

 

[Border]

I liked it a lot. Exactly how much time passed after the dad left? That was what seemed weird to me. Did they drive this woman insane over just a few days?

It felt very much like an episode of Tales from the Crypt -- where someone has some kind of evil plan, and the enactment of that plan almost exactly becomes their undoing.

 

[Teenage Fansub]

I thought it was great, but I'd seen the directors' previous movie, Goodnight Mommy, and that movie's thing was a bit too similar.

 

[Brakke]

Wasn't in to this at all when I went yesterday. Just unrelentingly bleak. Would've liked it to push harder in any one way. Get bizarre with that house? Get more ambiguous? Give the characters more room to breathe—the brother and sister had a nice relationship but they just kind of stop interacting as the shit hits the fan.

As it was, the whole thing felt kind of flat. Just nonstop mean.

 

[kai3345]

the directors must really hate kids. they're 2 for 2 when it comes to kids villains in their movies lol

 

[Cipher Peon]

I can't remember the last time I left a theater with a burning infernal and blinding hatred of a character as much as to did with these kids.

They deserve infinitely worse than what they got, and should have been punted into the sun.

I liked the movie otherwise but found it disappointing, considering the amount of time waiting to see it after the numerous delays.

 

[TheIlliterati]

I saw this in October at a film festival. I was emotionally destroyed by it, as I found Riley Keough's character's viewpoint 100% relatable to mine, as I also escaped a cult(not a suicide one but still). Imagining being forced to confront/return to your false beliefs that you've struggled to escape the way she did was devastating to me.

 

[AndreGX]

I hate those children

Movie was engaging, but that ending is relentlessly depressing

 

[Deception]

This was one of the darkest and hopeless films I've seen recently. I was into it but then ending kind of didn't do enough with the idea and the kids' motive isn't really thought out well enough imo. Did they just want to scare Grace? Did they want her to kill herself? Either way, what would have that accomplished besides causing their dad more grief. Really, really bleak film overall.

 

[wenis]

This was one of the darkest and hopeless films I've seen recently. I was into it but then ending kind of didn't do enough with the idea and the kids' motive isn't really thought out well enough imo. Did they just want to scare Grace? Did they want her to kill herself? Either way, what would have that accomplished besides causing their dad more grief. Really, really bleak film overall.

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I think its along the lines of Hereditary and its thoughts and exploration of grief in the family dynamic.

The dad was a selfish moron who was trying to fit in a new mommy into the family without recognizing his childrens grief (in the matter of six months, lets keep that in mind. these kids lost their mother in a suicide, SIX MONTHS PRIOR). He just wanted to slap a quick band-aid with this woman he met while putting together this documentary on a suicide cult, which also felt extremely sleazy on his part (maybe the dad is the ultimate villain of this, the patriarchy?). The kids motivation is basically just "we dont have a healthy emotional outlet anymore, the only one we had killed herself because of our father and the woman he cheated on mom with. so because we dont have that anymore, we're going to express ourselves by pushing this woman out of our fathers life with her own past trauma without really thinking about the ramifications of this because we are after all, children". That isn't to say the kids are blameless at all in this situation. they watched the tapes, they could see how fucked up grace was from the jump. This was a whole lot of bad roads intersecting at once and the Father was the one driving both cars right into each other.

It's all his fault basically.

 

[smileyforall220]

I liked it up until the twist. Way too unrealistic for just how cruel and methodical those kids were in their elaborate plan to make her commit suicide and break her. Just as trash as goodnight mommy in that regard. I was hoping for more of the cult angle, but instead the director did the same old trashy kids are sadistically evil thing again. Also the father got shot after like 40 seconds of being able to step in and knock the gun away, so stupid and infuriating. There is no reason he should have died other than convenient plot movement. End of the film I was rooting for the cult lady to take everyone out for as evil as the kids were.

 

[Violence Jack]

I watched it at a horror festival back in October. I enjoyed it, but was disappointed at the same time. The dad was an idiot, and I thought it was pretty obvious that the kids were fucking with the new stepmom. But who actually takes their new, mentally unstable girlfriend to meet their still grief-stricken kids 6 months after their mom killed herself and leaves them alone with her? He was an asshole, and the kids should've never been placed in that situation with the new girlfriend. The kids were over-the-top with their cruelty towards her. Once they killed her dog, I thought that everyone in that lodge was just the worst kind of person and needed to die. I felt no sympathy for any of them except the woman.

 

[Jeremy]

I didn't "buy" the plot, but the movie was so unshakably bleak and involving that I loved it anyhow.

Sometimes it's more about mood than logic... especially in this genre.

 

[Cass_Se]

I randomly saw it half a year ago at a film festival. It's a fun (enjoyable? It's way too bleak to be called 'fun' I guess) enough watch and it definitely tries to be a horror more in the mold of modern 'serious' horrors, but the plot gets way too stupid to take it seriously to be honest.

 

[Brakke]

The dad was a selfish moron who was trying to fit in a new mommy into the family without recognizing his childrens grief

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One of my issues is the movie doesn't really show its work on this. We learn later the daughter was chatting it up with dad on the phone every day. As far as we know, he was attending to the daughter's needs and she was telling him about how she was finding common ground with Grace.

Plus we don't know why the marriage fell apart. He was dating Grace before the divorce "finalized," but I don't think we know if he cheated on the wife? At most, we see him lie to his ex which... not ideal but hard to get that worked up about.

 

[excelsiorlef]

The whole plot setup was a little ridiculous with the father leaving the kids with this woman they barely know (or like) in a remote cabin without a car.

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He's a bad father.... and a bad husband.

That's part of the story.

He's neglectful.

Ultimately the only innocent person in this film is Grace ( and Alicia SIlverstone's character but she's less a character in this than a catalyst)

The movie fundamentally works because all the trappings of the unbelievable unrealistic horror movie decisions are rooted in the believable. Like the whole plot works fundamentally because the children outright abused a deeply traumatized survivor of a religious suicide cult with a plot that would only work one someone who carries the type of trauma a deeply traumatized survivor of a religious suicide cult would have.

The constant dollhouse imagery is phenomenal when you realize what it was.

 

[grang]

Just saw it in an otherwise empty theater, I really enjoyed it. Very tense.

A couple things on my mind.

Did they put something in her hot chocolate? Some sleeping pill or something, or an extra dose of an anti psychotic so she was knocked out long enough for her meds to leave her system and them to clear the house out?

Early on, one of them says to the dad, "she's from one of your books." Did they ever confirm what that meant? I assumed he was a doctor or something who worked with her after the cult and wrote about it in a book. Am I wrong to infer some kind of grooming situation?


edit: followed this up by finally watching It Comes at Night, which I didn't know also had Riley Keough, because I guess I wanted to feel like extra shit this fine Monday

 

[wenis]

Just saw it in an otherwise empty theater, I really enjoyed it. Very tense.

A couple things on my mind.

Did they put something in her hot chocolate? Some sleeping pill or something, or an extra dose of an anti psychotic so she was knocked out long enough for her meds to leave her system and them to clear the house out?

Early on, one of them says to the dad, "she's from one of your books." Did they ever confirm what that meant? I assumed he was a doctor or something who worked with her after the cult and wrote about it in a book. Am I wrong to infer some kind of grooming situation?

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i assumed from the book detail that Grace was sharing her story as an adult to the father about her experiences either for a story in a book about cults or as a standalone book about the cult itself. they fell for each other during that process.

its not too far removed from the cults in our world who had survivors go on to write about their stories for monetary gain (Heaven's Gate had a very similar case. a member of the cult left months before the cult went through their own mass suicide claiming that he had a vision that said he had so much more in the world to do to tell the story of Heaven's Gate and that he needed to leave the group to do that. So HG as a collective put together the money for him to leave. He then returned not so long after their mass suicide to then shoot the video that was shown all over the news and in coverage of Heaven's Gate and went on to write a book about the group).

 

[Avengers23]

I posted this in the trailer thread:

I don't think this was as effective as Goodnight Mommy because the role of religion and Grace's upbringing in a cult felt under-baked. I appreciated that the film pulled off a couple of perspective and sympathy shifts, but I came away from the film thinking that the filmmakers weren't sure how to incorporate the religious angle that is key to the film into their spooky children story.

 

[Anton Sugar]

My wife and I saw this last night and were disappointed, overall.

It has some effective sequences and had us interested for most of the runtime, but it feels like a collection of half-developed good ideas.

The script is...sparse, to say the least. Grace is the only person who feels like a real human. We don't know anything about the kids or the husband. We learn the daughter (and, by extension, mother) is religious, but don't know what their beliefs mean to them. We know they don't like Grace, but we don't know why or whether or not that dislike/mistrust is warranted. Because we don't really understand why they're pulling off this elaborate trick (other than misplaced resentment), they just end up being unlikable monsters (which I feel like was a problem in "Goodnight Mommy").

Even with Grace, though, we don't know what religion meant or means to her. We don't know what their father sees in her.

Other parts just felt sloppy. Grace leaves the house, wanders in the snow and hallucinates (?) a house that she can't get into with the preacher in it, then wanders back home and stumbles upon the "RIP kids" photo the kids planted under the snow...? OK.

We also felt the dollhouse imagery was pretty contrived and didn't add much. It's also a strange choice after Hereditary used similar looks.

 

[excelsiorlef]

We know they don't like Grace, but we don't know why or whether or not that dislike/mistrust is warranted.

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Yes we do, it's not, but it's almost rooted in a understandable reason, these kids are still in mourning. They never should have been left alone with her yet, and the Father should not have married Grace so quickly.

Ultimately for as fucking cruel the children are, the story here is the sins of the absentee husband/father.

 

[Bookoo]

He's a bad father.... and a bad husband.

That's part of the story.

He's neglectful.

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But I felt that the character didn't really earn that and it's basically that single decision that gives him that title.

Most of the time they are showing the father being relatively rational. They show him respecting their wishes not to meet this woman multiple times for like 6+ months, but then for some reason he drags them to a Lodge where is he going to have to leave for a couple days.

They should have:
Figured out a reason why the father has to leave the house for some period of time (Although makes planning the prank harder) or introduced Grace earlier.

 

[excelsiorlef]

But I felt that the character didn't really earn that and it's basically that single decision that gives him that title.

Most of the time they are showing the father being relatively rational. They show him respecting their wishes not to meet this woman multiple times for like 6+ months, but then for some reason he drags them to a Lodge where is he going to have to leave for a couple days.

They should have:
Figured out a reason why the father has to leave the house for some period of time (Although makes planning the prank harder) or introduced Grace earlier.

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I mean the subtext is he started up a relationship with a vulernable woman who was his subject on a book (likely while still married), then rushed to marry her 6 months after the mother of his children killed herself.


I mean you're probably right that maybe it's not on screen as much as I remember, very possible that the fact that the atmosphere and tension building worked so well to me that I'm sort of filling in the blanks via interpretation, would have to watch it again to be sure, saw it months ago

 

[SpitztheGreat]

Just saw this in a theater with only two other people.

LOVED IT.

I don't see many horror movies anymore, but this one really hit me just right. Bleak as hell, but I thought that all the characters were sufficiently worked out. For me, the gaps in the background and motivation were absolutely not a problem. The viewer is given just enough to piece it all together. I didn't need to know more. The kids are understandably fucked up, the dad isn't paying enough attention but also isn't a neglectful asshole, the girlfriend is mentally frail but not socially inept.

I actually thought that the development of the kids' characters was excellent. I was equal parts mad at them, upset for them, scared for them, and rooting against them. These kids aren't evil, but what they did is damn near unforgivable, but they pay the price (if you assume they die) and they realize that it's all their own fault. You can't hate Grace because she isn't comically violent or evil, she's just deeply disturbed and had the right buttons pushed at the right time. It reminded me of some real life stories of disaster where multiple things go wrong, and if any one of those hadn't gone wrong the situation would have been fine. But because everything does go perfectly wrong tragedy results.The only thing I would change is that I wish they had moved up the kids' realization that they had gone too far by about five minutes. Instead of waiting for Grace to find the dog, I wish they had realized it the second that she left to go find help. (Unless they did and I just missed that- was the movie trying to tell us that she just walked in that little circle and didn't actually walk off into a storm? My read on the situation was that she walked off into the storm, and accidentally looped back to the house. Then the next day was doing the circles on the lake and chanting. But it's a testament to the movie's warping of reality that the lines get blurry.)

I will say that the kids' plot was pretty advanced for a couple of tweens. I thought the hanging bit was especially farfetched. That's really the bit where the kids do cross the line from horrible to damn near evil. That's why I say they're unforgivable. If they had moved up their turn by five minutes, and avoided the hanging scene, I think the kids work better for more people. You can still find a way for them to push her over the edge, but it could have been less severe and something more in line with what two tweens could pull off.

I also really dug the little Sleepaway Camp cameo on the tv early in the movie. :)

 

[SpitztheGreat]

Did they put something in her hot chocolate? Some sleeping pill or something, or an extra dose of an anti psychotic so she was knocked out long enough for her meds to leave her system and them to clear the house out?

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I feel like they mentioned something about dosing her. When the brother and sister are talking on the bed and acknowledge for the first time that things have gone too far I felt like they said something along the lines of using her drugs.

That said, I don't think she was out for son long that the meds got out of her system. From my interpretation she needs to take the meds regularly every day. So once they went missing it was only a matter of time. All they did was drug her so that she slept extra hard. Perhaps the fumes from the gas stove played some part of that too.

 

[theBmZ]

Just got out of this today. My brother is split on it, he thought the kids plan was a little too unbelievable, and had a hard time buying their cruelty, especially after the daughter expresses her thoughts after the funeral in the beginning. But he loved the ending, and actually found it unnerving, and disturbing.

I really like the whole thing a lot. The ending kind of recontextualized the entire first two acts. Grace's decent into madness. The way the film put us into her head space using the information we learn early on, only to flip it on its head in the end, was terrific. I also loved how the film portrays religion as something that corrupts, and can be corrupted. Grace was someone who got corrupted into a terrible system, but survived, attempted to make a better life. The children use their religion, information about her past, and her easily broken mental state to torture, and potentially scare her away. I was actually disturbed by just how cruel the children revealed themselves to be. Not very Christlike. It totally worked for me. Once I understood exactly what was happening, I was thinking wow, this is wrong. And the way everything becomes too real, and comes back around on them, and unfortunately the father, was just so dark, and grim, and bleak. I loved it.

 

[smileyforall220]

Completely unbelievable just like goodnight Mommy, kids that are so unrelenting sadistic with no back story whatsoever. The cult stuff felt super half baked

 

[SpitztheGreat]

Just got out of this today. My brother is split on it, he thought the kids plan was a little too unbelievable, and had a hard time buying their cruelty, especially after the daughter expresses her thoughts after the funeral in the beginning. But he loved the ending, and actually found it unnerving, and disturbing.

I really like the whole thing a lot. The ending kind of recontextualized the entire first two acts. Grace's decent into madness. The way the film put us into her head space using the information we learn early on, only to flip it on its head in the end, was terrific. I also loved how the film portrays religion as something that corrupts, and can be corrupted. Grace was someone who got corrupted into a terrible system, but survived, attempted to make a better life. The children use their religion, information about her past, and her easily broken mental state to torture, and potentially scare her away. I was actually disturbed by just how cruel the children revealed themselves to be. Not very Christlike. It totally worked for me. Once I understood exactly what was happening, I was thinking wow, this is wrong. And the way everything becomes too real, and comes back around on them, and unfortunately the father, was just so dark, and grim, and bleak. I loved it.

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Like I said, if they simply reworked or cut the hanging scene, I think the kids stay just barely on the correct side of not evil/evil. I still bought their change of heart, but even if they had survived those kids are dangers to society.

 

[Alec]

Saw it yesterday. It was fine. Don't fuck with people's medicine.

 

[bastardly]

Well that was awful. The whole set up is just too out there, and what if she died trekking out there? Was that their plan? Then why the change of heart? Either commit or make a different movie, what a fucking waste because the main actress and initial setup was amazing.

I think I'm over these art house horror flicks, besides hereditary, none of them did anything for me.

 

[SpitztheGreat]

Well that was awful. The whole set up is just too out there, and what if she died trekking out there? Was that their plan? Then why the change of heart? Either commit or make a different movie, what a fucking waste because the main actress and initial setup was amazing.

I think I'm over these art house horror flicks, besides hereditary, none of them did anything for me.

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As much as I enjoyed the movie, the more I have thought about it the more I feel certain that I would have pivoted the movie that that point. While the change of heart did work for me, it would have made for a stronger movie to cut the hanging scene, and make the turning point when Grace wonders off into the storm to save them. This would require some sort of final catalyst to break Grace entirely (I don't think her dog's death would have been enough without the hanging scene) but it would have prevented the children from going so far and breaking the audience's suspension of disbelief.

I don't think the children wanted her dead, I think they had a very short sighted goal of simply hurting Grace and driving her away. For me it worked that their plan was both ill-conceived and overpowering (they didn't have the forethought to consider what their action would do to someone, but were also spiteful/smart enough to understand how to crank things up to 11), but when they go to such extreme lengths to fake a hanging then you're talking about some real evil territory.

 

[THEVOID]

Saw this last night. I don't think the kids were assholes as many of you said. They just lost their mother 6 months ago and weren't exactly mentally stable nor did they want her to be there, understandably. But the whole setting up this elaborate "dollhouse" really pressed the realism in this movie. The father leaving for three days? Gun in the house was too plot convenient and unrealistic considering the crap that soon to be step mother was going through in her past.

All the acting was top notch (had no idea Alicia Silverstone was in this?) and it was a well made movie, and I feel in the end let down by character and the over-all plot choices. What a crazy way to get back at your father for putting you in this situation. Holy hell!

 

[Addleburg]

This is on Hulu now, just so you all know.

I saw it a couple days ago... I thought it was okay. My favorite parts of it where actually towards the beginning. I like how we saw Grace through the kids' perspective as this shadowy presence always lurking in the corners until she's finally exposed in the car as being, well, perfectly normal.

I found myself going back in forth in my theory of what was happening. I saw Goodnight Mommy a while ago, so I couldn't help but wonder about some of the parallels with the kids being the aggressors, but some of the shit they have them do just felt so unrealistic and time consuming (they seriously made all those snow angels just to mess with her? They seriously cleaned out all the cabinets just to get her to admit to... something? He seriously FAKED hanging himself?) that I just figured that maybe there was genuinely an external threat.

The doll house reveal was good, but also kinda silly. And in general I've found that cult shit in horror movies just doesn't resonate with me, either in terms of being scary or interesting. I thought Riley Keough's performance was great, but that the depiction of her PTSD was a bit vague and convenient for the plot that it manifests in violence. And that the kids don't immediately pull the plug on their plan when they find Grace standing over the son's bed in a daze, holding a gun is pretty comical.

Alicia Silverstone's performance was great but brief - her unexpected inclusion reminded me of seeing her in The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

Movie was ok. Would like to see them work with a new idea that isn't "2 kids who are stuck in a remote home think the lone adult is replacing their mother, only for the viewer to find out that the kids are the aggressors all along."

 

[Dalek]

My wife and I saw this last night and were disappointed, overall.

It has some effective sequences and had us interested for most of the runtime, but it feels like a collection of half-developed good ideas.

The script is...sparse, to say the least. Grace is the only person who feels like a real human. We don't know anything about the kids or the husband. We learn the daughter (and, by extension, mother) is religious, but don't know what their beliefs mean to them. We know they don't like Grace, but we don't know why or whether or not that dislike/mistrust is warranted. Because we don't really understand why they're pulling off this elaborate trick (other than misplaced resentment), they just end up being unlikable monsters (which I feel like was a problem in "Goodnight Mommy").

Even with Grace, though, we don't know what religion meant or means to her. We don't know what their father sees in her.

Other parts just felt sloppy. Grace leaves the house, wanders in the snow and hallucinates (?) a house that she can't get into with the preacher in it, then wanders back home and stumbles upon the "RIP kids" photo the kids planted under the snow...? OK.

We also felt the dollhouse imagery was pretty contrived and didn't add much. It's also a strange choice after Hereditary used similar looks.

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this is exactly how I felt. It's directed well, good cast, good mood, good music. But the story just isn't there for me. It never felt believable in any way. Even at the end when shes exhausted and delirious the kids could have easily fought back against her. It was a hard sell.

 

[SpitztheGreat]

this is exactly how I felt. It's directed well, good cast, good mood, good music. But the story just isn't there for me. It never felt believable in any way. Even at the end when shes exhausted and delirious the kids could have easily fought back against her. It was a hard sell.

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That part worked for me, the kids are young and scared out of their minds. Their father was just murdered in front of them, they aren't thinking straight meanwhile their pursuer is exhausted and delirious, but she's also very calm and mission driven. If the kids had fought back successfully, it would have fed into the other problem that the kids were too advanced/overpowered/unbelievable.

 

[PersonAndStuff]

I really loved this movie. Tons of interesting choices. The way we never really quite see Grace until she's in the car. The way it flips back and forth between who is the main character. I will say, the question of whether these kids would do the thing and if maybe they would have cut it off a little earlier. I don't have a good answer for that but asking that question took me out of the movie.

 

[HiLife]

This was such a weird movie where I wasn't sure who I should like. The kids are pieces of shit but then again I don't really know a kids psyche especially after they probably saw their moms dead body in the kitchen. The worst offender is probably the dad. I don't understand how you could write a book(?) / do research on a stranger who was clearly indoctrinated into a cult and was traumatized for it, only to allow that stranger in your cabin with kids. When they don't even know each other.