The Lodge-- My take on the movie with spoilers!

PLOT SUMMARY: When Grace is left with her boyfriend's kids at The Lodge, they play a mean trick on her with dire consequences. 

How many times have we been told to let go of resentment feelings when someone has hurt us? Move on, they say.

“They” in question, have not really experienced your kind of hurt. They are being objective when they dole out advice that they think will benefit you.

It’s when you hear it the first time, that you think, how can they possibly understand what you’re going through?

As time passes though, the resentment turns to hate, and that, in turn, leads to misery. Eventually, you chose yourself for giving up so much time thinking about that one person who doesn’t even deserve a place in your thoughts. Because that one person is never even going to apologize. They didn’t think they did anything wrong, to begin with.

The Lodge is a prime example of why revenge shouldn’t really be your only agenda. Especially when you don’t fully know your “enemy”.

The person who is supposed to be the enemy doesn’t believe they are at fault for your misery in the first place.

THE LODGE Movie Plot 

The movie begins with a shot of the interiors of a dollhouse. Laura is getting her children Mia and Aidan ready to see their father. She’s obviously upset and takes great pains to dress up well.

The children are also not too ecstatic to go and ask if “she” is going to be there. Laura arrives at Richard’s place and while the kids go off to place, is told that Grace isn’t here and then, Richard drops the bombshell: he wants to finalize the divorce and marry Grace in a few months.

Laura is upset and leaves immediately. She goes home, drinks a glass of wine, takes a gun out of her purse and kills herself. The scene is both sudden and shocking.

At the funeral, everyone is sobbing and when the service ends, they all let go of black balloons.

Mia wants to send a doll that she uses to depict her mother, with the balloon. However, due to the weight, it doesn’t fly off and she has to let the doll stay.

At night, Mia frantically sobs because she’s certain that her mother won’t go to heaven because she committed suicide and the balloon not taking the doll meant it was a sign. She’s inconsolable and her brother Aidan sets up a sleeping bag near her bed and holds her hand.

Six months later, at Thanksgiving, Richard announces he wants to marry Grace, and that they would be going to the Lodge to celebrate Christmas. Aidan is adamant that he won’t go if Grace will be there. Richard wants the kids to give Grace a chance.

A few days before Christmas, Richard puts the kids in the car, then stops to pick up Grace. The kids have already done their research on her. She used to belong to a cult and her father was the leader. He had pretty much killed all his followers by brainwashing them into thinking a better life lay for them after death. Grace was the only one who survived.

Grace seems pleasant but the kids are determined to hate her. After a very long drive, just to show us, viewers, how far away and cut off from the world the family is going to be in the Lodge, they arrive.

Grace has a dog called Grady who is given a bed of his own.

At night the kids hear Richard and Grace having fun and seem pissed off. The next day, Grace joins the kids for ice skating but is told to hand back the hat she wore since it belonged to their mother. Grace returns it and also apologizes.

Mia roams around with a doll and drops it into a hole. Grace offers to retrieve it and falls in herself. Richard saves her.

At dinner, Mia says a prayer before eating and Grace’s nose starts to bleed. She also isn’t too pleased with all the religious paintings in the Lodge but is being tolerant.

Richard isn’t too comfortable leaving the kids and going to the city for work for a few days. Grace who was gulping down pills hides the bottle from him.

Basically, Richard saw that his kids hadn’t warmed up to Grace. The Lodge was miles away from the nearest town. Should his kids get into an argument with his girlfriend, what would they all do? Seriously, was he really leaving his kids and new girlfriend all alone in the middle of nowhere?

Grace, too, was being eager to get along with the kids.

Their mother just died, it was going to be obvious that they were going to blame her. Their first get together was in the Lodge where they were going to be stuck together. She already had a traumatic childhood and was dependent on pills she was hiding from Richard.

Her first interaction with the kids should have been at a mall or something before upgrading to a whole week in a cabin.

Seriously, what was Grace thinking of putting herself in a position where she could lose control of herself?

Of course, things go wrong as soon as Richard leaves.

The kids stay in their rooms. Grace is left alone hanging Christmas decorations. Mia seems to warm up to her after she saved her doll but Aidan still keeps to himself and leaves messages on steamy bathroom mirrors.

Grace confronts Aidan and tells him to stop spying on her in the shower.

That night, Grace is watching movies with Mia when Aidan comes in and hands Grace hot chocolate as a sign of truce.

Mia is feeling cold and Aidan puts up a gas heater which Grace should have told him to switch off as soon as she smelled gas.

But she doesn’t say anything and only manages to get them to turn off the horror movie and watch a family film.

Grace awakens later to find herself on a bed of snow in the middle of nowhere. The ice cracks and she falls into the water. Her father is alive and pulling her in further.

Grace awakens from the nightmare and finds all the things missing, even the Christmas decorations. Certain that the kids are pranking her, she confronts them but finds their things missing as well. All the food and power is gone too.

Grady is nowhere to be seen.

The next day, Grace offers to walk to the nearest town as they have almost run out of food which was beans glop and crackers.

She doesn’t make it and returns to the Lodge only to find a picture of the kids with a black ribbon stating it is in memory of them.

Aidan believes they all died of suffocation because he had dreams of being unable to breathe.

Grace doesn’t believe him and Aidan decides to prove it by hanging himself. He is alive and tells her that they cannot die because they are all already dead.

Grace keeps changing the date from 9th Jan not realizing that even if Aidan’s theory is right, not every day could be 9th January, could it?

The kids begin praying earnestly, advising her to do the same and repent for her sins.

Grace still doesn’t believe them but all that praying and her missing pills, cause her to lose her sanity and she walks out. She finds Grady’s frozen body and carries it home.

Mia begins to sob because she didn’t want Grady to get hurt. Grace sits on the doorstep, cradling the dead dog that had meant everything to her after her traumatic childhood.

THE LODGE ENDING EXPLAINED 

The kids realize their plan to make Grace believe she was dead has backfired and tell her everything.

But Grace is too far gone. At night, she punishes herself by burning her knees and nose.

The next night, she comes to the kids and tells them they need to repent as well. She has a gun that Richard had kept in his safe and told Grace about.

The father meanwhile has realized he can’t reach his kids. Aidan and Mia were unable to get the generator running again and couldn’t charge their phones.

Richard arrives only to be shot in the face by Grace who keeps murmuring she’s dead.

The kids are horrified that their stupid prank has turned grisly. They are made to sit at the table while Grace prays, then she gets up to tape their mouths with a tape that has the words SIN written on them.

The movie ends with a scene of the gun.

The kids probably don’t survive.

The movie suffers from long dragging scenes and borrows heavily from The Others.

The twists are predictable but the horror scenes are effective.

Had the movie not felt so dragging, this would have been a taut thriller.

Scare scale: 2.5/5