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#Watching ROGUE

Aughties Ozploitiation about a killer crocodile from the guy that brought you the light hearted romantic comedy Wolf Creek.

https://letterboxd.com/noeljpenaflor/film/rogue/

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Underrated Gothic Horror Gem: The Lodgers (2017) dir. Brian O’Malley

Since Gothic Horror is having a resurgence at the moment, I thought I would raise awareness of one of my favourite films in that genre: The Lodgers (2017) dir. Brian O’Malley. I’m really enjoying Irish Horror at the moment, particularly Irish language horror, but this film is one of my favourites that I feel is underrated. The Lodgers is a Gothic gem of a ghost story.

Film blurb (Letterboxd): 1920, rural Ireland. Anglo-Irish twins Rachel and Edward share a strange existence in their crumbling family estate. Each night, the property becomes the domain of a sinister presence (The Lodgers) which enforces three rules upon the twins: they must be in bed by midnight; they may not permit an outsider past the threshold; and if one attempts to escape, the life of the other is placed in jeopardy. When troubled war veteran Sean returns to the nearby village, he is immediately drawn to the mysterious Rachel, who in turn begins to break the rules set out by The Lodgers. The consequences pull Rachel into a deadly confrontation with her brother – and with the curse that haunts them.

This review contains some spoilers for The Lodgers, hidden in inline spoilers through the post. Click to reveal.

Rachel (Charlotte Vega) stands outside the house in the poster for The Lodgers

The film has so many layers to it. The central premise strongly reminds me of the charges laid against the Anglo-Welsh/Cymro-English gentry throughout early Welsh Gothic fiction; namely, that they were inward-looking, inward-loving, and corrupted through their proximity to Englishness. In these texts, they were often descended from traitors to native Welsh rulers and heroes. From these ancestors, they inherited a family shame. See: ‘The Doom of the Griffiths’, by Elizabeth Gaskell, first printed in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (1858), and ‘The Doom of the Prynnes’, in Twilight Hours: A Legacy of Verse (1868) by Sarah “Sadie” Williams, a London-Welsh poet, pp. 27-52.

The Gothic trope of the setting (usually a house) externalizing and representing the internal state of the inhabitants is used to great effect in this film. The house, like Ireland’s Anglo-Irish elite, is crumbling. The waters are (literally) rising – the house is drowning, and, nationally, Home Rule is on the horizon, ready to wash away the inglorious history of colonisation. The twins, Rachel (Charlotte Vega) and Edward (Bill Milner), are orphans, just as the Anglo-Irish elite are perceived as not having a mother-country or a fatherland of their own; to echo and paraphrase a medieval complaint about the nature of identity, they are ‘too Irish for the English, and too English for the Irish’ (a translated paraphrase of Geraldus Cambrensis, The Conquest of Ireland).

Rachel, the only one of the twins who ventures out of the house, experiences the intense dislike and suspicion of the villagers. We learn that they know the dark, corrupting secrets of her parents, and see her as the embodiment of that same corruption. The boys in the village see her in much the same way as the empty stately homes of Ireland’s colonised past were seen after their inhabitants had gone – as something to be pillaged. The English lawyer (David Bradley) crosses the threshold but does not belong there – he doesn’t understand what keeps the twins in this place, and cannot appreciate or fully comprehend their lineage, nor the dark secrets they have inherited.

Sean (Eugene Simon) who returns home after getting his leg blown off in the trenches, fighting for the British army, comes home not as a hero but as an outcast for fighting in a British war. He sees Rachel as an outcast like himself, and because of his political convictions, it is also natural that he would be drawn to her despite, or (partly) because of, her status and her Englishness.

Spoiler: Sean & Rachel

It is this attachment to Rachel that dooms Sean in the end, foreshadowed by the loss of his leg. This can be read as the bald statement at the heart of his tragedy. His loyalty and attachment to the English bring him nothing but pain and loss. They will rise above him even as – and because – he is willing to die for them. There can be no happy ending in his story if he remains bound to Rachel.

Rachel: “You won’t follow me all the way home limping like that will you?”
Sean: “I would if you ask me to.”

Rachel is also a fully-fleshed out character too, not merely a cipher. Vega plays her well; sheltered and naïve in some ways, but still grounded and holding the estate together as best she can, trying to maintain her dignity and shoulder the weight of her responsibilities, and take care of her sickly twin.

I think if you’re looking for Gothic heroines, then Rachel deserves to be counted alongside Edith in Crimson Peak (2015), Ellen in Nosferatu (2024), and Elizabeth in Frankenstein (2025).

She doesn’t have the same aesthetic as these ladies, with her extremely muted world of greys inside the house contrasted with the natural world of the woods, lake, and village outside of it, but that’s the point. Whenever Rachel escapes her muted palette by venturing into the world outside, whatever she encounters is more solid and real than the ghostly echoes of her family’s disturbing past she is otherwise locked up with.

Rachel (Charlotte Vega) and her twin Edward (Bill Milner) in The Lodgers

Bill Milner does a fantastically creepy job as Edward. Open the Spoiler box to read more about his role and a certain Gothic trope (depicted/hinted at in the image above).

Spoilery discussion of Edward & Gothic Tropes

It takes the Gothic trope of incest (specifically sibling incest) and sets it against a healthier attachment (Rachel’s feelings for Sean). This shouldn’t be compared to Crimson Peak too much in terms of plot, however.

Edward’s character is closer to Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus in Gladiator than he is to Tom Hiddleston’s Thomas Sharpe, and the ghosts are not there to warn against the union of the twins, but instead to ensure it. Of the two of them, Edward, as the male heir, is the most sold on the rules of ‘The Lodgers’, and the most determined that they will continue the legacy of their ancestors.

Rachel is the one who sees this is no longer possible – that they are living in a new age, a new world of modernity, of self-determination, and she is able to reject this legacy and move on. That she does so on the eve of Irish Home Rule is not an accident. If Rachel is able to leave and abandon her place in a world that no longer has a place for her, then her absence leaves space for the community left behind to move forward without her presence chaining them to a crumbling and corrupt colonial past.

The ghosts are definitely creepy, and their watery graves add an Otherworldly sense of menace that pervades the whole tone and colour palette of the film. I really loved how understated it was. Loftus Hall, reputedly one of the most haunted sites in Ireland, was used for the shoot, which must have been an amazing experience to film in and certainly adds to the atmosphere.

The details in the house are also really well thought-out; my favourite piece is the statue in the alcove on the stairs, facing the wall. Why won’t the statues show their faces? What is it about their identity that they hide, or rather, what was happening in the house that the owners turned their statues around, so the statues couldn’t see? I think there’s something so subtly sinister about statues facing the wrong way, especially as it takes a moment to notice, and it adds to the feeling that there is something very wrong with the house and its occupants, and this wrongness goes back for many generations. I think this also links with the backward-looking or inward-looking theme of the family as well, and by extension, is another critique of the Anglo-Irish gentry more broadly.

All in all, I love The Lodgers and its many layers, and how atmospheric it is. O’Malley has named sapphic sadomasochistic drama The Duke of Burgundy (2014) dir. Peter Strickland as one of the influences for the film, as well as the Gothic psychological horror film The Innocents (1961) dir. Jack Clayton and starring Deborah Kerr, itself an adaptation of the 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw by American-British author Henry James.

Other modern influences cited by O’Malley include the The Others (2001) dir. Alejandro Amenábar, and El Orfanato/The Orphanage (2007) dir. J.A. Bayona, both wonderful examples of modern Spanish Gothic ghost stories, and highly influential. I can definitely see these parallels, and I love how all of these worked with David Turpin’s script to create a story that is indebted to multiple influences, but is ultimately a deeply Irish film.

I think more people should check it out, and explore the range of Irish Gothic and Folk Horror films – as well as Welsh Gothic and Horror. I really hope we get more Scottish Gothic films soon. There is such a wealth of stories to tell and ways to tell them, and as far as the Gothic is concerned, the more, the merrier… or rather, the more, the more macabre…

Like This? Try These:

In Praise of Non-Anglocentric Frankensteins

Welsh Gothic Essays

and:

#ghostStories #gothicFiction #gothicHorror #horrorMovie

Gothic Horror film The Lodgers: Edward (Bill Milner) touches his sister Rachel's (Charlotte Vega) hair with his head cocked to one side, just staring at her. They are standing on the staircase, and a statue is in the background between them, with its back to the viewer, facing the wall where the paint and plaster are coming away to reveal the fabric of the building beneath. The colours are extremely muted, almost greyscale, with brown as the stand-out dark colours (the bannisters, their hair) and the whole scene seems washed in shades of grey-blue/green.

Gothic Horror film The Lodgers: Rachel (Charlotte Vega) stands in a long plain dark dress in front of a mist-shrouded house, walking through the woods in front of it. The trees in the foreground are a stronger colour than the washed-out, ghostly house in the background, and Rachel herself is pale and her clothes stand out like the trees, as if she is fighting to be real, but is herself an ethereal figure, caught between the natural world and the phantom world. Behind her, one of the upper windows of the house is open, and the white curtains are billowing outside. The rest of the house is shuttered and locked, with white blinds and curtains covering every other window.

Well, I have to give it to Weapons. I didn't think it was scary *at all*, but then it proceeded to haunt my dreams last night.

I do wish it had a more coherent thematic/emotional through line. It was an interesting enough story decently told, but I got to the end & realized I didn't feel any particular way, which is especially disappointing to me in a horror film, which you would usually expect to engage you on the emotional & instinctive level.

#Weapons #HorrorMovie

Good evening, Mastodon. I seem to have done something to my access that prevented me from moving followers and those I was following from @signalthirteen to this new home for my station The @lastsignal Such is life.

I love most music, particularly #ElectronicMusic and #RetroMusic, also enjoying #Vaporwave, #AlternativeElectronic and #dreampop

I'm a #horrormovie fan, as well as #SciFi and I really enjoy low and microbudget films on #Dust and #Alter

I'm #retired and living in #CaribouCountry in #NorthernBC and am the proud pet parent of a 6 month old #Keeshond puppy, who is not always certain his guardian has all their marbles.

A Keeshond pupper, a long haired Spitz type dog, with long soft black, grey and brown hair and a dark muzzle. He has a fox style face and a black muzzle. His eyes almost look like they have spectacles. He is giving the camera some serious side-eye.

The Wildest Robert Englund Movie You Probably Missed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMIuGJFvT2M
#TheHorrorGeek #MikeBracken #SickFlicks #2001Maniacs #LinShaye #RobertEnglund #TimSullivan #HorrorMovie #HorrorMovies #HorrorFam #MutantFam

I keep meaning to make a yearly #Thanksgiving-ish tradition to watch #Kristy, but I usually forget to actually watch it. So, that’s what I’m doing now. I’m #NowWatching #Kristy, which is a #Thanksgiving oriented #HorrorMovie from 2014!