The Gift2015
Overall7.3
Fear2.0
Atmos7.0
Gore1.0
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grief
The Lodge
2020 · R · 1h 48m
You're not welcome here.
A remote lodge. Christmas snow. A new stepmother. Two children. You won't believe what comes next.
The Lodge is Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz's slow, suffocating psychological horror about Grace — the sole survivor of a Christian doomsday cult's mass suicide as a child — who is now engaged to a man named Richard. When Richard takes Grace and his two grieving children to a remote winter lodge for Christmas in an effort to help them bond, things go very wrong. Riley Keough delivers a haunted, fragile lead performance; the film traffics in atmosphere, dread, and the terrible weight of belief.
dramamysteryhorrorthriller
Tags
child-endangermentatmospheric
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Scores
Based on 1 rating
7.0
Overall
Fear2.0
Gore1.0
Atmosphere7.0
LanguageEnglish
RatingR
Running time1h 48m
SpoilersSynopsis — contains plot detailsSynopsis↓
Aidan and Mia's mother Laura takes her own life shortly after their father Richard tells her he wants a divorce to marry Grace, the younger woman he's been seeing. The children blame Grace.
Months later, Richard tries to repair the family. He proposes a Christmas trip to a remote winter lodge — Grace, the kids, a few days alone together to start fresh. Grace is fragile. She is the only survivor of a Christian doomsday cult that committed mass suicide when she was a child; her father was the cult's leader. She is on medication and carries deep trauma about death, sin, and atonement.
At the lodge, Richard is called away for work for a few days. Grace is left alone with the children, who are cold and watchful. Strange things begin. The power dies. Possessions vanish — phones, clothes, Grace's medication. Religious symbols appear on the walls. Time slips. The dog disappears. A clock won't reset. Grace's grip begins to fail.
Without medication and increasingly sleep-deprived, Grace begins hallucinating her cult, her father preaching, the suicides. The children, after a long silence, gently tell her what she has begun to suspect: they are all dead. They died at the lodge. This is purgatory. They are being punished for their sins.
The twist arrives quietly. The children planned everything. They hid the supplies, staged the religious imagery, and constructed the entire ordeal to break Grace and drive her out — a punishment for what they believe she did to their mother. Aidan researched purgatory on YouTube.
But by the time the children admit what they've done, it is too late. Grace has reverted fully to her cult beliefs. She believes they must atone. She finds the dog the children had hidden and kills it as a sacrifice.
Richard returns to a home in disarray. Grace shoots him.
The final scene is unbearable. Grace seats Aidan and Mia at the dining table and begins to recite the hymn her father preached — "Repent, repent." The children comply, knowing what is coming. The film cuts to black on the recitation. The implication is final.
