Tales From The Lodge is a British dark comedy film directed by Abigale Blackmore. The plot sees a group of aging friends retire to a cabin in the woods to scatter the ashes of their recently deceased friend. However, while there strange things start to occur, and things soon take a turn for the sinister.
90% of this film is great, really interesting, and creepy. However, the final reveal of who the killer is, and the last 10 minutes are nothing short of insulting, and yes to properly express my critique of the film I will be spoiling the twist.
So the initial almost anthology like horror tales approach is used well and for the most part the stories themselves serve to give a good chill and more than a few macabre laughs. However, as things start to devolve into slasher fare that is when the film falls apart.
The final reveal that the supposedly dead friend has instead become a woman in the hopes of seducing his straight best friend who never noticed his affections while alive but decides to try to kill him anyway is everything wrong with this film. The demonisation of trans people as insane killers, is something that has been a problem of the horror genre for a while, but it is especially bad here.
To make it worse the twist is blindingly obvious as well.
Overall, this film had a lot of promise, but the ill-fated, stereotype pushing, trans bashing final reveal sours me on the film.
Pros.
The horror tales
The cast
A few good scares and a few good laughs
Cons.
The reveal
There is no mystery to it, it is fairly obvious from the get-go
2.5/5
Reviewed by Luke
Another Millennial Reviewer 