A weekend getaway in the gorgeous Colorado Mountains should have been a magical time for Michael (Owen Szabo) and Julia (Elizabeth Kell). After three years together, Michael intends this weekend to be the one that takes their relationship to the next level. But looming woodland cabins laid against rural locations lurk as ominous settings for wonderful weekends, especially when you’re in a horror film. So, despite the couple arriving in the warm light of day, we can already feel the chill in the air as they step inside their roomy new retreat. While the door is left mysteriously unlocked and the kitchen seems a shambles, nothing is more concerning to the happy couple than the fact that the caretaker Henry (Kevin McClatchy) doesn’t seem to know that they are coming at all. On the second night, when Julia swears she’s seen a bloodied child (Mandi Kreisher) in the living room, the pair finally begin to realize that their weekend in paradise is about to turn into hell on earth.

First time filmmakers Brad Helmink and John Rauschelbach stumble pretty quickly out of the block with their debut feature. Visually the film looks great and the directors elicit some solid performances from the assembled cast—none of whom have sizable resumes to their credit. Where the film runs into problems is tonality. From the moment Michael and Julia see the house, it’s foreboding to the viewer. It hardly helps that the opening frames of the film show a murder taking place—and we’d be fools to the concept of omniscient plot device to not know where that massacre just occurred. So, when the couple discovers that Henry hasn’t got a clue who they are, we pretty much know where this is all headed.

The screenplay by Deb Havener tries to overcompensate for giving up it’s ghost too early on, by introducing a twist to the story—in the name of Desi—the bloodied girl that was lurking in the living room. Is she a ghost? Is she a victim? Was she even there at all? What Desi as a character manages to accomplish in the film is more revolutionary than one might imagine—and her performance and the situations she’s a part of are pretty far out there! It’s effective and off-putting at the same time. But, it doesn’t feel like it’s part of the film as a whole and so, I’m not sure it works at all. In any case, it is an interesting ingredient that might have worked better if the filmmaker had been subtler at the outset of the story regarding their characterization of Henry.

On a brighter note the film’s cinematography by Aaron Platt, is far superior to the kind of muddled messes that usually accompany low-budget films. The exteriors are lush and take full advantage of the scenic locations while the interiors are spacious and warm before transitioning toward tight cold blues and deep, dark, blacks.

Overall THE LODGE has moments that could have and should have made it an efficient suspense thriller. As it stands, the film’s decision to leave little to the imagination stagnates the production early on leaving the project with little more choice than to try and shock you toward the ending. As a whole the production feels like two divergent screenplays, both with the same pitfalls in lesser digress. The first half shows us too much information and so we know everything before the characters do and the second half shows us too much information in an effort to disturb us. As the final frames flicker all we are really left with is a film that ultimately relies on shock value as a substitute for terror—a film that features solid performances and striking cinematography but is devoid of any real suspense. Perhaps next time, the crew behind THE LODGE will play their cards a little bit closer and give the audience a little less to work with, because somewhere inside THE LODGE there is a very good film trying to claw it’s way past the plot killers in an effort to live.