Little Bone Lodge

Director: Matthias Hoene
Screenplay: Neil Linpow
Starring: Joely Richardson, Neil Linpow, Sadie Soverall, Harry Cadby, and Cameron Jack
Country: United Kingdom
Running Time: 90 mins
Year: 2023
BBFC Certification: 15

Matthias Hoene’s previous success with genre twisters Cockneys VS Zombies and The Warrior’s Gate intrigued movie audiences with their combinations of action and comedy.  With Little Bone Lodge, the director presents a more straightforward approach to the crime thriller, but one which remains steeped in the realm of the sub-genre: secluded home or cabin in a forest; well-groomed and polite family who are not what they appear to be; and the Gee, I certainly took a wrong turn somewhere flick.  While admittedly one of the triter setups, herein, the horror oozes through the narrative until gradually reaching a crescendo as one brutal detail builds upon another.  But where Hoene’s other movies relied heavily on homage, Little Bone Lodge utilizes the style of the psycho-drama in a way that is keenly aware of its antecedents, allowing the storyline and the actors to provide the sort of kick to the guts we expect from such fare.

Joely Richardson gives a compelling a performance the equal of past roles, such as we’ve seen in Event Horizon, The Color Out of Space, or her superb work in the television series Nip/Tuck. In Little Bone Lodge she plays Mama and her acknowledgement early on that “It’s not tough when you know what matters” gives us the initial clue to figuring out what’s going on in this house of secrets.

The film opens with Mama and daughter Maisy (Sadie Soverall) about to present a birthday cake to a wheelchair bound and largely unresponsive Pa (Roger Ajogbe).  The party draws to an abrupt end when criminals Jack (played by writer Neil Linpow), and his younger autistic brother Matty (Harry Cadby) arrive.  Having dragged an injured Jack through rough territory during an ongoing ferocious storm, Matty pounds on the door begging that someone save his brother.  Both have apparently survived a car crash and struggled to make their way to the lonely farmhouse far from the nearest town.

Matty’s fit of despair over Jack’s injuries finally compels Mama to open the door and let them in.  We understand her trepidation in doing so, yet we are not fooled.  As a woman used to working with her hands, we get the idea that any sense of menace comes from within those walls, not without.  With Maisy’s help, Mama tends to Jack’s wound, sewing him up and settling Matty enough to get him to eat and relax.  When Jack awakens, he convinces Matty to pull a dramatic routine in order to convince Mama to take Jack back to their crashed vehicle to retrieve Matty’s things.  We soon learn that the real purpose is to retrieve a bag of money.

A momentary battle of wills concludes with Mama agreeing to take Jack to the site of the crash.  With bag, and the gun within it, once more to hand, Jack threatens Mama into driving him to a local callbox so he can phone the third wheel in their organization — a threatening overlord who now demands double what he’s owed to drive to the farmhouse and ferry them away.

A policeman on the trail of the crooks pulls up to the house further adding to the tension, which, by now has ratcheted up to the plateau of the film’s first third.  We’re next treated to a well-orchestrated scene channeling the macabre energy of conversations observed in Hitchcock classics such as Notorious or Shadow of a Doubt.  What follows in the last two acts of screen time is a mixture of intensities drawing out the inevitable showdown between the criminals and a mother willing to do whatever it takes to maintain her family.

Little Bone Lodge best succeeds in its creation of moody uncertainty.  Playing off of the kind of camera angles used in Psycho and any number of movies where the killer might be lurking behind a locked door, or lying in wait just out of frame, these aspects do not surprise us, yet, to his credit, the director largely refrains from the use of jump-scares or the gorefest one sometimes experiences in gangster-related cinema.

These aspects, in conjunction with the stellar performances, carry what might otherwise have been a mid-range effort.  From the opening scene Little Bone Lodge telegraphs the fact that things are not as they seem.  But to express more risks spoiling the plot for less experienced film goers.  Those savvy to genre cinema will quickly recognize that despite what other reviewers have to say, there are few surprises, nor is the conclusion as staggeringly shocking as it might want us to believe.

Ultimately, Little Bone Lodge serves as a powerful vehicle for its leads, and, one hopes, will propel them into similarly challenging parts, and its director to take on other projects of a similar caliber.

Little Bone Lodge is out now on digital platforms, courtesy of Signature Entertainment.