Movie manipulation is a tricky thing. The greats – think Spielberg in ET – are clever in how they deploy their tactics, weaving the manipulation into the background so you don’t notice. The Lodge is the opposite of that. This movie has a lot of powerful moments, but because the ending betrays most of what the movie had set up, all of those powerful moments end up meaningless, especially poor, poor Alicia Silverstone.
Silverstone plays Laura, a very Christian woman crushed by her divorce to Richard (Richard Armitage). Despite the love of her kids Aidan (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh), Laura decides that’s not enough. Flash forward, and Richard has decided to marry his new love, Grace (Riley Keough). To introduce his kids to her, Richard proposes Grace, Aidan, and Mia go to their secluded lodge. Things get weird when Richard gets called to work for a few days, leaving Grace alone with the kids, and as the story shows, she’s not exactly super parental material to begin with.
What’s most frustrating about the Lodge is that the setup is pretty solid. The movie gets your attention almost immediately; I certainly got a little wide eyed. Then the movie slows down, and sets up its story of dread: Grace trying to be a parent to these two kids who blame her for the death of their family, while dealing with her own demons. We get signs early on that Grace is still living life traumatized from past events; these horrors have left her mentally scarred to the point that we start quickly questioning what she is seeing. And since we’re living through Grace’s eyes for a large chunk of the movie, The Lodge has us disoriented and uneasy as it pushes toward some inevitable conflict that is going to happen.
The writes of The Lodge just forgot a little thing called logic, which might have made their movie great, or at least good. There’s a subtle twist with about 30 minutes left that’s supposed to make the audience go “Oh sh*t!” However, that twist comes at the expense of multiple characters’ setup, dissipating any dramatic tension and replacing it with an eye roll. As a result, this movie falls apart like Post Malone is singing it. With all that emotional tension gone, your eyes become clear, and you see all the seams of the directing, wondering what it was all for because of the poorly conceived plot. Unlike Serenity’s crazy twist, which make that movie bonkers in a fun way, The Lodge’s twist simply will make you mad. Riley Keough deserves all sorts of credit for doing her best to save this dumpster fire, but as talented as she is, there’s little she can do.
Let’s try to get Riley Keough better movies eh? I don’t think she’s doing anything wrong though. The directors she picks are usually good choices, she just happens to pick their ambitious failures. At some point, she’s gonna strike gold; and for all the misses? They can go burn in The Lodge and hopefully be forgotten quickly.