Out of Sundance last year, our own Meredith Borders called NEON’s The Lodge, the latest by Directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, “a relentless onslaught of unease.”
Arriving in New York and Los Angeles theaters this Friday, February 7th before expanding everywhere on February 21, The Lodge follows a family who decides to spend the holidays at their remote winter cabin. When dad Richard (Richard Armitage) must head back to the city for work, he leaves his children, Aidan (IT’s Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh), in the care of his new girlfriend, Grace (Riley Keough). A blizzard traps the trio inside the cabin, locking them into a bone-chilling nightmare as Grace’s past threatens to overtake them all.
Fiala and Franz create a sustained level of tension throughout, made even more unnerving by the isolated setting from which their characters are unable to escape. In anticipation of The Lodge’s release and celebration of its severe intensity, we look back at some of horror’s most unnerving offerings.
1408
For a film set mostly within a single hotel room, 1408 coils the tension tighter and tighter as it progresses. Based on Stephen King’s short story of the same name, the adaptation follows cynical author Mike Enslin (John Cusack), who accepts an anonymous challenge to check himself into the infamous Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel. A room so haunted that no one stays beyond an hour, and in the hotel’s 95-year history, it’s wracked up a death toll of 56. An onslaught of terror ensues for poor Mike, making a chilling believer in the process.
Night of the Living Dead
By today’s standards, George A. Romero’s classic may not seem all that unnerving. I’d argue that it is, especially in the context of its release. Night of the Living Dead is a tense siege movie; a group of strangers barricades themselves in a farmhouse, trying to survive against an endless horde of walking dead. It’s more than the living dead’s insatiable hunger that provides unnerving horror, but that this group of strangers can’t get along long enough to combat a common enemy.
It Follows
After Jay (Maika Monroe) sleeps with her date, he confesses he’s passed on a supernatural affliction through their sexual encounter. One that will relentlessly pursue her until she dies, or if the curse spreads far enough to keep her out of its direct path. The mysterious entity can look like anyone, and only the afflicted can see it. This begins a feature-length chase steeped in paranoia; Jay can’t stop running for any lengthy period, and danger lurks everywhere. With no respite from potential death, It Follows maintains a near-perfect level of suspense.
Don’t Breathe
A trio of thieves break into a blind man’s house, expecting to tiptoe around him and run off with his riches. They have no idea just how capable and dangerous the man truly is until it’s far too late. Fede Alvarez’s sophomore effort dials up the tension to unbearable levels, creating one of the most unnerving cat-and-mouse thrillers that flips the home invasion subgenre on its head.
Green Room
In Jeremy Saulnier’s visceral, breathless thriller, a punk band must fight for their lives when one of their own accidentally witnesses a crime in the remote neo-Nazi club where they’ve just performed. Vicious, violent, and with an edge-of-your-seat tension that threatens to send your heart into overdrive, Green Room blurs the line between horror and thriller, offering up one of the most anxiety-inducing features in years.
The Strangers
“Because you were home,” marked the dread-inducing punchline of one of horror’s most foreboding home invasion films of all time. A young couple, seemingly at the end of their relationship, find themselves fighting for their lives when a trio of masked assailants show up at their remote home with murder on their mind. It’s not the quick and dirty kind of death they have in mind, but the slow, predatory stalking that comes with relishing their torment. It’s suspenseful, atmospheric, and utterly creepy.
The Invitation
Will accepts an invitation to attend his ex-wife’s dinner party, but being in his former home drudges up painful memories of the child they lost. What’s worse is that his ex-wife’s behavior sets off inner alarm bells. Is there something seriously amiss with her intentions for the evening, or is his depression clouding his perception? The mystery lends palpable terror to an intense evening that brings paranoia and pain. The Invitation is a horror-thriller crafted around an insane level of nail-biting tension until it explodes in a memorable finale.
The Descent
Long before the ill-fated spelunkers realize just how much trouble they’re really in when they explore an unknown cave system, director Neil Marshall ramps up the terror by cluing in the audience. Lost and on their own, group tensions threaten to boil over. It’s at this precise moment that we see a creature lurking in the background, biding its time for the hunt. White knuckle tension kicks into overdrive from there. Claustrophobic horror has never been as unnerving or as primal as it is in The Descent.
[REC]
A television reporter and her cameraman’s overnight fluff piece on firefighters turns into something far more harrowing when they follow their subjects on a call to an apartment building and become locked in with unimagined evil. It’s not just the limited scope of the camera the provides unrelenting fear, but the unpredictability of the infected and the limited places to hide in this quarantined apartment building. For unsettling nightmare fuel and eerie mythology, [REC] offers up one of horror’s scariest.
Inside
Depressed and reclusive after her husband’s death, a pregnant woman’s Christmas Eve turns deadly when a mysterious woman shows up to her home, hellbent on taking the unborn baby for herself. Gory, disturbing, and claustrophobic to an insane degree, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s debut feature makes for one discomforting and tension-fueled viewing experience. And Beatrice Dalle’s La Femme makes for one seriously feral horror antagonist.
For more claustrophobic dread and unrelenting tension, look for The Lodge in limited theaters starting this Friday, February 7, 2020, before expanding on February 21.
