10 Great Cliffhanger Endings From Recent Horror Movies

8. What Happens To The Kids? - The Lodge

Movie stepmothers generally have a tough time. Typically seen as unwanted symbols of change in the eyes of their new stepchildren, they often struggle to be accepted.

This is where Riley Keogh’s Grace finds herself in 2019’s The Lodge after she is invited by her husband-to-be Richard (Richard Armitage) to spend Christmas with her soon to be step children Aidan (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh) at their family’s isolated lodge.

Haunted by memories of being raised in a cult, and being the sole survivor of their mass suicide, Grace relies on medication to help keep her trauma at bay.

Grace soon comes to suspect that the children are pranking her after possessions strangely disappear, along with all of her medication.

As Grace breaks down from her lack of meds, the children confess that it was indeed all a ploy to convince her that they were trapped in purgatory. However, by then it’s too late and Grace is too far gone, now fully convinced they are indeed in purgatory and stating that they must make a sacrifice in order to reach heaven.

By the end, Grace has killed Richard and captured the children after they try to escape, ending on a scene where Grace has the kids bound back at the lodge with the recently deceased Richard seated at the table, as Grace contemplates the gun placed across from them.

With the fate of Grace and the kids left to our imagination, it’s a truly chilling pay-off to the gradual descent into madness we have witnessed for Grace throughout the movie.