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Julia and Michael are a young couple taking a romantic weekend break in a remote lodge in the mountains. When they arrive they discover that the caretaker Michael is a little strange, but settle in to enjoy a dirty weekend. During the night there seem to be some strange goings on and Julia swears that she saw a young girl's face at the window, but there is no-one there. The next morning the couple discover a car with bloodstains and while trying to find a phone to call from, meet the girl hiding in one of the rooms...
The Lodge gets off to a rather slow start, we meet the characters and the creepy lodge caretaker, then get to spend 30 minutes learning nothing more about the couple, or any more about the caretaker, except that he is still rather creepy. The film picks up in the evening as doors start to mysteriously lock, alarms go off in distant rooms and strange faces appear at the windows - the film seems to be building to be a neat little haunted house movie.
Then it all gets thrown away to become some sort of unambitious rape and revenge film with some hints of a little torture porn - although one without the cojones to actually show the rape, revenge or torture in any detail, leaving us with an endless amount of screaming, chasing and hiding. The mysterious girl has some potential, but nothing is developed about her origins or motives. Pacing is terribly slow at times and given that the characters are poorly defined, there is no real tension - indeed the serial killer is far more interesting than the douchebag boyfriend - the couple often act stupidly (returning to the Lodge at one point when they could have hidden in the woods) and despite a big deal being made of Julia being a trainee kickboxer, she obviously forgets this pretty quicky and it never comes into play. A horribly clichéd ending is only ameliorated by the fact the film has finally ended.
Two credited directors is rarely a good sign, John Rauschelbach and Brad Helmink (also two of the film's producers) give the film a fair, if often over-done look - an excess of shots from hip-height might be an attempt to pay tribute to Yasujiro Ozu or just provide an unsettling atmosphere, either way it seems a little random. An excess of day-for-night photography leaves the night scenes impenetrable while the lighting in the interior night scenes is inconsistent, with some of them excessively over-lit and the day scenes have an odd soft focus to them that might be intentional but seems to serve no purpose. The lodge location is pretty fair, looking suitably remote and the limited gory effects look quite good, although a shot of some day-glo red blood on a car-door is a little implausible.
Kevin McClatchy is definitely the best thing in this, managing to make his lodge caretaker genuinely creepy without going over the top in the opening scenes and he seems interested enough in the production to play along with the strange developments in later scenes. Mandi Kreisher looks very good as the creepy girl, although she doesn't get much to do. Owen Szabo and Elizabeth Kell are rather flat as the couple and never elicit any sympathy for their characters.
Despite the slow opening, The Lodge would have been salvagable if it went for a haunted house plot, but instead it goes down a dull and drawn out pyscho horror route and stiffs us on the gore and brutality that might have at least made it interesting. No reason to watch this.
| Anyone famous in it? | No-one well known. |
| Directed by anyone interesting? | John Rauschelbach and Brad Helmink - the two directors also worked as producers on this film and their only other credit is on crime short Twisted (2010) |
| Any gore or violence ? | Some blood and implied, although largely unseen brutality. |
| Any sex or nudity? | A very brief, distant topless shot in the opening. A short rape scene without nudity. |
| Who is it for? | Not of particular interest for anyone. |
| Visuals | Original Aspect Ratio - 1.78 anamorphic widescreen. Colour. A clean digital print, although very soft in places, might stem from the original filming. |
| Audio | English 2.0 stero - sounds fine. |
| Subtitles | None |
| Extras | None. |
| Region | Region 0 (ALL) - PAL |
| Other regions? | Also available on DVD in the US from Monarch. |
| Cuts? | Believed to be fully uncut. Print language is English. |