Tales from the Lodge

source: Tales from the Lodge

English humour always gets me so I had to watch this one. Laughed all the way through, but because it was intentionally funny! Great acting, great twists. Totally recommend this little British gem.

"Tales from The Lodge" is a British Horror Comedy that I found on Amazon Prime. Not quite a portmanteau film, as the overarching story is more involved than just a framing mechanism, the film still tells a number of shorter horror tales within the runtime. Six friends, Married couples Joe (MacKenzie Crook) and Martha (Laura Fraser) and Emma (Sophie Thompson) and Russell (Johnny Vegas) as well as Paul (Dustin Demri-Burns) and his new girlfriend Miki (Kelly Wenham) come to a remote farm house to commemorate the passing of another friend, who drowned there three years early. As the friends get drunk and tell each other ghost stories, the increasingly isolated Miki decides to leave but then returns a few hours later having been attacked in the woods by a stranger. Generally, the film is more successful as a comedy than it is a horror film. Five of the six stars gets to direct their mini-stories and though there's not a particularly spectacular one amongst them, they all work in the context of the film. I really liked how those stories interacted with the voice overs telling them, with the characters pausing or changing actions depending on how the narrator changed the telling. The best is probably Johnny Vegas' Zombie/Lost Boys one, which includes animation and visual effects - as well as some fourth wall breaking Zombie make up moments. I don't like spoilers in my reviews, so I'll dance around the details here. I felt the resolution of the overall story let the film down a bit. I did see some of the twists coming and when you look back on it, the stories that the characters tell are often revealing about themselves. This whole final section doesn't quite nail the right tone, getting the mix of comedy and violence a bit wrong. On the whole it's a bit slight and has a few missteps, but to say this was Writer/Director Abigail Blackmore's first feature, I'd say it shows some promise.

Well......this was a fantastic tounge in cheek comedy horror starring the legend Johnny Vegas. It was well written n a superb story. The plot was great too. There were some tense scenes n good suspense towards the end. The acting was brilliant n the characters were excellent n full of wry humour. The ending was horrifically funny n unpredictable I highly recommend this movie especially if you like comedy horror.

Loved Sophie Thompson in this - she has great comic timing!

I watched the UK TV premiere of this but found it disappointing, both as a comedy and as a horror anthology. The only two actors that I had heard of is Mackenzie Crook and comedian Johnny Vegas. I find Crook's acting rather lacklustre, I wasn't impressed by his Worzel Gummidge either. Johnny Vegas, with his foul language and fart gags, is funny when doing TV sketches but his comedy doesn't work so well on the big screen. The short stories are rather lame, the best of a bad bunch has zombies and Vegas looking like Keifer Sujtherland from Lost Boys. The only thing that really made me laugh is when some ashes of a friend are thrown towards a lake but a sudden gust of wind blows them back and all over a group of mourners. Beware of fake reviews!

Tales From the Lodge made me both jump and laugh - I thought the premise of an unwanted guest at a funeral was really great and I loved the tension around that. The cast are so charming! I thought style was great where the main plot was broken up by short stories - the way they were told were really stylised and interesting and they often didn't go at all where you expected them to. Definitely give it a watch!

This movie was such a disappointment The premise sounded great and it had the cast to carry it well, but the plot made no sense and by the final act it had devolved in to bare faced bigotry the likes of which I haven't seen since the Thatcher years and Section 28 - in 2019 there is absolutely no justification for it! "Gay man, rejected by straight friend, goes on a killing spree and has a sex change for no reason" isn't a twist, it's just homophobic.

The cast are great including Kelly Wenham who I hadn't heard of before, as is the scene setting, but the stories they tell are absolute rubbish. The comedy element works well, it's just those stories.. Watched on Amazon Prime, and had real trouble hearing a lot of the dialogue, had to put headhones on as I had to turn it up to levels where the sound effects rocked the room just to hear the dialogue otherwise.

I decided to give this a go based on the cast, and I was looking for something with a bit of dark humour... Having always loved the concept of storytelling, I was hooked from the start, waiting eagerly for the next character to tell their story... I wasn't expecting the twist towards the end, and the closing scene itself leaves you wondering.... just great fun.... I recommend you give it a go!