The lodge (2019) 🏚️

 

I got cold 😰

     To begin this review, it's essential to provide context for the plot before delving into the events. The Lodge tells the story of siblings Aidan and Mia Hall. After their mother's suicide, they are forced to live with their father. During the December holiday season, a new figure enters their lives: Grace Marshall, their future stepmother, whom the siblings utterly reject from the start. They are then compelled to spend an extended period in a remote cabin, where strange occurrences begin to manifest.

 

Hall siblings 

     Grace Marshall is initially presented as a sweet and warm young woman, breaking the stereotype of the evil stepmother. However, she carries a radically sectarian past from which she was a survivor. During her stay in the remote cabin, Grace attempts to connect with the Hall siblings, but her efforts are futile; they are completely unwilling to engage with her. As time passes, the children's father must leave for a work commitment, leaving them alone with their stepmother for a couple of days. Knowing Grace's turbulent background, it's natural at a certain point in the film to question whether it was a wise decision to leave the children in her care.

 

Grace having a psychotic episode

     As the nights grew more unsettling, Grace began to experience a psychotic break. This led to vivid hallucinations of her dark past while she slept, causing her to sleepwalk and wake up in unfamiliar parts of the cabin. Noticing this, the children devised a plan to destabilize Grace's sanity. With each passing day, Grace's condition progressively worsened. Anxiety, medication withdrawal, hunger, and the biting cold combined to plunge her into a profound state of emotional instability. This amalgam of problems convinced her that she was dead and trapped in purgatory, believing she had to redeem her sins through sacrifices.

 

This initial prank could have escalated into something far more outlandish, something hidden.

     The situation in the cabin becomes critical: stranded in the middle of a forest with no food, no heating, and no phone signal, while an endless icy blizzard rages outside, the sanity of all three inhabitants is put to the test. During the nights, morbid events and the voices of sermons calling for repentance completely unhinged Grace's mind, leading her to commit acts she believes are "pure." Days later, with no news from his children, the father decides to return to the cabin. There, he is met with a psychotic scene that leads to a tragic end.

 

Rate: 4/5

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The cabin's sinister atmosphere was deeply unsettling. While it might initially seem like a ghost horror film, its ambiance and strong connection to reality make it clear we're dealing with a work of psychological horror. This horror exists exclusively within Grace's mind.