Butler's Cinema Scene

Charlotte Vega, Bill Milner

“THE LODGERS” My rating: C+

92 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Atmosphere trumps just about everything else in the Irish-lensed “The Lodgers,” a ghost story as ephemeral as “The Turn of the Screw.”

Brian O’Malley’s yarn unfolds in the early 1920s on a decaying Irish estate.  Twins Rachel (Charlotte Vega) and Edward (Bill Milner) live alone, the last of their once-wealthy family.

They’re going slowly mad, living by arcane rules (for instance, they must be in bed by midnight) that make no sense.  Edward is further down the head-case highway than his sister and acts as the enforcer of these edicts; Rachel is quietly defiant and looking for a way out of her situation.

As is so often the case in these stories, the real conflict arrives with an outsider. Sean (Eugene Simon) has returned from the Great War with a wooden leg and the scorn of the local louts, who consider him a traitor for fighting side by side with the hated Brits.  But Sean spots Rachel on one of her rare trips to town and, well, he gets interested.

David Turpin’s screenplay is bigger on weird moments than well-developed characters, and the deep generational secrets that keep the twins in virtual bondage are predictable if improbable (incest, anyone?).

But coherent storytelling takes a back seat to director O’Malley’s visual flourishes: a stagnant pond that erupts in disturbing visions, a trap door in the floor that oozes viscous liquid, a blue/gray palette that cloaks everything in twilight dimness.

Don’t expect “The Lodgers” to provide any kind of  coherent statement. But its dank/dark visuals are compelling in their own right.

| Robert W. Butler