Irish eyes are not smiling in gothic thriller

Coming of age can be wondrous. But perhaps not if you live in a haunted mansion in Ireland. That’s what Rachel and Edward (Charlotte Vega, Bill Milner) learn in The Lodgers, a moody, gothic thriller from director Brian O’Malley. The orphaned twins have just turned 18, and Something in their home has Unnatural plans for them.

David Turpin’s screenplay grounds the action during the Great War, which means national and sectarian feelings are running high. In the nearby village, Sean (Eugene Simon) has just come back from fighting for Britain, which makes him unpopular. It doesn’t help that he’s taken an interest in Rachel, whose reclusive

manners already have her marked as the town weirdo.

But it’s Edward who’s the real oddball, holed up in the house and muttering about Them. “They” live in the bowels of the place and set rules about isolation and privacy.

The lugubrious tone, studded with murky references to Edgar Allan Poe and shaded with forbidden sexual longing, may strike some as tiresome. But the set design is amazing. The crew shot at Loftus Hall, an Irish mansion with a thousand years of history. In the movie, it’s drafty, but the breezes babble; damp, but the water droplets fall upward. Their Britain-based solicitor (the reliably creepy David Bradley) warns of bankruptcy and urges the siblings to sell, but “They” clearly have other ideas about that.

The story also gets much mileage from its performances. Milner’s is necessarily one-note, but Vega does a great job portraying the sadness and resolve of someone stuck in a situation but determined to break out of it. It’s a real case of Us versus “Them.”