10 Horror Movie 2020 Fates Worse Than Death
3. The Lodge - Grace Is Convinced She's Really In Purgatory
A weekend trip to a snowy cabin with your two new step-children might already seem like a fate worse than death, but this one gets decidedly worse when the kids in question elect to play a prank with deadly consequences.
They two children know that Grace, their new step-mother, is the survivor of a cult who committed mass suicide. Thus, they play on her religious beliefs, setting the cabin up to appear as though they are all in literal purgatory together. Aiden, the eldest child, even goes further and sets up a rig that allows him to appear as though he's hanged himself.
Crucially, because he's awful, he also hides Grace's medication.
The audience along with Grace are not let in on the fact that this is one big, sick joke. Consequently, increasingly detached from her senses, Grace succumbs to the isolation and exposure, coming to the conclusion that she and the children really are dead and they have not made it to Heaven.
The final act is crushing. Richard, the previously elsewhere father, arrives but is quickly shot in the head by Grace to prove to the children that this is the only way to escape the limbo. Then the flick ends on an ambiguous note: Grace ties up the kids, fully believing the delusion, and looks at a pistol before the credits roll.
Did she kill them all? Did she come around? If they do survive, what new hell will she be forced to face?