Riley Keoughas Grace MarshallThe story
About The Lodge
A few days before Christmas, a father leaves his two grieving children at the family's remote winter lodge with his new fiancée, a woman they resent, and heads back to the city for work. A blizzard cuts the three of them off, their belongings and the holiday trappings start to vanish, and the woman's buried past as the sole survivor of a religious cult begins to surface as the house turns against them all.
The CineClaus verdict
Christmas is the reason everyone ends up snowed in, and then the film strips it away piece by piece, which is the cleverest thing it does. Franz and Fiala build dread patiently in narrow grey rooms, and Riley Keough is excellent as the outsider the grieving children refuse to accept.
Nobody here is offered any comfort, least of all the audience, and the ending is utterly bleak. Hammer devotees with patience for a slow, unforgiving burn will get the most from it, so treat the festive trimmings as bait.
The family desk
Can the kids watch?
Our take: opening with a suicide and dealing in self-harm and a cult backstory, it stays genuinely frightening to its grim ending, so older teens at the very earliest.
Content advice & accessibility
- Our age guidance
- Editorial, separate from the official 15 certificate, and never looser than it.
