Tales From The Lodge [PORTABLE]

A group of friends travel to a secluded lake house in order to mourn the death of their friend. As their weekend away progresses, each share a fictional story ranging from creepy to goofy. But they will soon find themselves in a scary story of their own. Written and Directed by Abigail Blackmore, Tales from the Lodge has a lot of unique anthology stories within, however the ending is a gross exploitation that simply is inexcusable in this time.

Tales from the Lodge

When their close pal Jonesy dies by suicide, five friends head out to his lakeside lodge to scatter ashes and pay their respects. Paul (Dustin Demri-Burns) throws a wrench in the weekend by allowing his new girlfriend to tag along. The rest are a bit unnerved by this, as it should be a deeply close, personal moment for them and not a time to bring around a new fling.

As they settle in and reconnect, they all begin to tell short tales one-by-one. Stories of masked killers, horny ghost possessions, and a zombie apocalypse, among a few others. While they try to have a good time, despite the sadness and tension looming over them, they begin to discover they might be at the center of a real life horror.

A group of middle-aged friends gather at a remote lodge to honour a friend who recently drowned in a nearby lake. With emotions running high, everyone makes the most of a gloomy situation by celebrating the best way they know how: swapping silly, scary stories that would have earned a giggle from their dearly departed pal. Urban legends about a masked slasher, a paranormal ghost hunt and a post-apocalyptic wasteland soon lose their fun shock value as the sextet become stuck in a true terror tale that exposes dark secrets no one could have possibly foreseen.

This was a relatively standard hunt (as polar bear hunts go). This story takes place in Alaska, beginning when Dr. Barrick and two Alaskan native guides flew over the polar ice cap to look for polar bear tracks in the snow. When tracks were spotted from the plane, they landed and proceed to track the bear on foot.

The polar bear is one of the most fascinating animals in the Lodge, and it was a pleasure to hear this story from Dr. Barrick himself. Not only is Dr. Barrick an excellent storyteller, but his life is an incentive for all of us to take a step toward our adventurous side!

Hailing out of the UK, Abigail Blackmore will see her anthology-esque Tales from the Lodge have its World Premiere at the forthcoming SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.

An isolated lodge somewhere in England. Five old university pals, now nudging 40, gather for a weekend to scatter the ashes of their friend, Jonesy, who drowned himself in the lake three years earlier.

Tall Tales Bar & Grill is just footsteps away from the entrance of the Bass Pro Angler's Lodge in Hollister, MO. This full-service restaurant offers an over-the-top sports bar theme while serving up a taste of the Ozarks with plenty of fun to be had. Open to the public, guests are able to enjoy delicious cuisine, arcade games, billiards, a golf simulator and multiple large-screen TVs.

Five old university friends, plus the new girlfriend of one of the group, gather together to scatter the ashes of their departed friend Jonesy at his old cabin in the woods. Whilst there, they try to scare one another with tales of the macabre, before the events of their trip take an even more sinister turn.

The Big Chill meets Are You Afraid Of The Dark? is the best way to describe English writer/director Abigail Blackmore's directorial debut, Tales from the Lodge. The portmanteau horror-comedy centers on five old friends who reunite at a remote cabin to scatter the ashes of a dearly departed pal. While there, they share scary and silly stories... and unexpectedly stumble into one of their own.

Following the Tales from the Lodge world premiere at SXSW, Blackmore sat down with SYFY FANGRRLS to share her demonic origin for this twisted horror-comedy, as well as the winding road that led to her first feature film.

Improv led to writing sketches, then a sketch show, which she performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She wrote the short film "Blind Date," which earned an award at the Los Angeles Film Festival and scored her an agent. "That kicked off my professional writing career," Blackmore recounted. "From there, I wrote a couple of screenplays. (Tales from the Lodge) was one of them." Finally, it was a fateful trip to a pub that led to Tales from the Lodge going into production. There, a friend introduced Blackmore to Ed Barratt, a producer on the hunt for female-made projects as part of an initiative to make UK film more inclusive.

Tales from the Lodge began with one seed of a story: a wife stuck in a rut of a marriage finds new passion when a sex-crazed demon possesses her husband. "I did try and write that as a feature," Blackmore said. However, as she fiddled with that premise, she felt it worked best short, spooky, and salacious. "But I really want to make a feature. I love portmanteau style films. So, I thought I'd have a go at writing one. I had nothing to lose. I was literally just writing for myself."

This incubus tale became one of the campfire stories told by the grieving goofballs in Tales from the Lodge. From there, Blackmore tried to imagine what kind of people would gather around a campfire to hear such a story. "You expect them to be teenagers or in their 20s," Blackmore said, referring to a slew of slasher flicks set in the woods. "There's always five of them. There's always two couples and one guy who smokes weed. I don't know why that is. But so I thought, 'Well, okay, couples. Three couples, (including the weed smoker's new girlfriend) and they're all in their 40s, because I'm in my 40s, and I thought it would be really interesting to see how these people who would never be in a horror film would react."

"In the tradition of a portmanteau film or an anthology, you'll have different directors for each story," Blackmore said. "That was the original plan." But rather than casting a net for just any directors, Blackmore and Barratt decided to look for actors who'd be willing to star and helm. "There were so many brilliant actor/writer/directors, comedian/writer/directors in the UK, why don't we just get the actors to direct a story each?" she explained. The first to sign on was Mackenzie Crook, who might be best known from the British version of The Office or from Pirates of the Caribbean, but is also a BAFTA-winning director of the TV comedy The Detectorists. He was offered any tale to direct and chose that of his character, Joe. "So then we're like, 'Okay, that makes sense,'" Blackmore recalled, "Let's have each actor direct their own character's story."

From then on, signing on to Tales from the Lodge meant helming the story told by your character. Blackmore directed the overarching narrative of the friends, but when it came to shooting their stories, she described her role there as "wingman." Through vignettes that involve demons, zombies, killer clowns, and psycho slashers, Blackmore made sure everything came together into one horror-rich and hilarious tale.

Buzzed off her SXSW debut, Blackmore's looking to make another "amusing creeper" as she calls Tales from the Lodge. "It's my new genre, the amusing creeper," she teased, "Because people ask about that. Tales from the Lodge is not really a scary film. I am fascinated by how you make people scared. It's really hard. I love comedy, and I love writing comedy. I feel much more confident there. You can tell if something's funny, but it's really hard to tell if something's scary, because you can see all the workings behind it. Everyone's scared of different things. So, I want to do another that maybe is a little bit creepier than this one, but it'll still be funny."

Tales From The Lodge is a fresh take on the portmanteau horror-comedy genre. An isolated lodge somewhere in England. Five old university pals, now nudging 40, gather for a weekend to scatter the ashes of their friend, Jonesy, who drowned himself in the lake three years earlier. They settle in for a fun evening, entertaining each other with stories of murders, ghosts, zombies and possessions, but as day turns to night, the gang become aware of another horror story unfolding around them - And this one is real.

A dark comedy directorial debut from Abigail Blackmore who combines a decent helping of British comedy and several horror shorts directed by each of the stars in the movie that range from Mackenzie Crook to Laura Fraser to Johnny Vegas. The comedy is on point for the most part and the film shines in its main story arc with the shorts feeling like the weakest area. It certainly feels like a homage to films of yesteryear and Blackmore does show a great deal of promise. A horror you could easily stick on with your parents and not have them reaching for the vomit bag.

If Peter's Friends were made by '70s portmanteau horrormeisters Amicus, then you'd have Tales from the Lodge, the story of five friends who met at university who reunite at a remote lakeside cottage to scatter the ashes of a sixth pal and amuse one another by telling creepy, twisted tales.

Detectorists is one of my favourite tv series of all time. Such a beautifully shot, hilarious, heartwarming, wonderfully acted, charming and thoughtful series. I've watched it twice now, and I'm sure I'll be watching it again. And this has the series creator and one of the funniest actors from it, in it.

The Lodge is a 2019 psychological horror film directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, written by Franz, Fiala, and Sergio Casci, and starring Riley Keough, Jaeden Martell, Lia McHugh, Alicia Silverstone, and Richard Armitage. Its plot follows a soon-to-be stepmother who, alone with her fiancé's two children, becomes stranded at their rural lodge during Christmas. There, she and the children experience a number of unexplained events that seem to be connected to her past.

The project was announced in October 2017, with Riley Keough joining the cast of the film and Franz and Fiala directing from a screenplay they wrote alongside Sergio Casci. Much of the cast joined that February 2018 and principal photography began in March 2018 and wrapped that same month. 041b061a72