The Lodge (2020)

Appropriately frosty and aloof, The Lodge is a meditative plumbing of the darkest parts of the human psyche, our vulnerabilities, and self-doubts and it’s these personal fears that resonate loudly.

While the cabin seemingly offers a rural respite, the endless snow and the situational horror of it all adds agoraphobic washes to any space. Couple that with captivating uses of grey and silver — seriously, the gradient factor in those two colors here is awe-inspiring by itself — and the dread becomes suffocating.

The longer The Lodge rolls along, the sheer skilfulness of the execution — the precise manipulation of the audience’s fears — becomes so impressive that one is tempted to simply succumb to its cold, cruel efficiency.

An ambitious, expertly crafted, and admittedly kind of ludicrous horror movie.

Once the film wrestles itself from the confines of its spiritual predecessor [Hereditary], The Lodge is able to chew on some truly mind-bending ambiguities that kept me guessing—suspended in relatively effective tension—on what was actually happening.