The Lodge (3 Stars)

This is the first film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

The Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival contains a mixture of films, from small independent productions to big budget horror and sci-fi movies, but it attempts to present a special film as its opener each year. This time it's been decided to open the festival with the latest film from Hammer Horror, "The Lodge".

I can sum it up by saying that I love the atmosphere, but I hate the story.

A journalist, named only as Richard, does research to write a book on a suicide cult. Only one person survived, a young woman called Grace. She was designated as the survivor, because she had to film the scene of the dead bodies. In the course of his investigations, Richard falls in love with Grace and leaves his wife. As a result his wife commits suicide.

A few months later Richard takes Grace and his children on holiday to a remote lakeside lodge for Christmas. The two children hate their new step-mother, because they blame her for their mother's death. There's an emergency at work, so Richard has to leave the others alone. At first things seem to be improving, with the children being able to talk to their new mother. Then things go wrong. The electricity is cut off, and personal items disappear from the lodge.

The story has a multiple plot twists. Normally I gasp with surprise at plot twists, but in this film I groaned. I would have been happier with a more linear plot. The overall result is disappointing.

I'm glad that Hammer Horror has been revived, but they've lost the connection with what made them great in the 1960's. None of the original films were really scary, they were camp and frequently amusing. That's what they should try to achieve today.

Over the next eleven days I'll be watching up to four films a day, leaving me little time for other things like sleep. Because of the time constraints I'm imposing a 10 minute limit on myself for writing each review. What I can't write in 10 minutes won't be written at all.