An indie British horror portmanteau, “Lore” (2024) – directed by James Bushe, Patrick Michael Ryder, and Greig Johnson – gives enough space to tuck in diverse micro-narratives and elements that saturate the overarching horror genre: psychological, gothic, feminist-horror, and giallo. There can be contestation over the choice of the title of the film as none of the stories can be typified as legends or myths. They do not even have any background information regarding why things pan out the way they do. However, this is not a review. Here, we only break down the film to make it easier for you to perceive the work.
Lore (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Is Darwin’s Horror-Themed Camping Expedition a Deadly Trap?
Four friends – two guys and two girls – book a horror-themed camping expedition amidst a thick forest. Flashing a toothy grin and dangling his latest furry hunts, the expedition guide, Darwin, appears out of nowhere to spook them. Darwin informs that the rest of the guests have withdrawn from the plan, so only the four friends and he will be there for the rest of the night. They are asked to set up their tents in the middle of the forest. The night falls, and the four friends are swooped into the ‘immersive’ experience by Darwin around a bonfire.
Darwin tells them that the soil their feet currently touch has once enshrouded 3,500 unidentified dead bodies. He warns them of an ancient evil force that is perhaps the cause of the death of such a large population. Darwin believes that the dead people were dragged into the earth by this devil so that it could feed off their dead bodies for the rest of its life. Noticing his guests’ lack of interest in his story, Darwin pulls their attention by revealing a totem. A totem has been traditionally used to feed the evil, he says. He invites them one by one to throw the totem into the fire to talk to the evil through stories that have haunted them from time immemorial.
A Monstrous Creature at the Warehouse
Mark, one of the guys, volunteers to throw the totem into the fire and share his story first. His story starts with a man trying to evade the clutches of two bulky men chasing him with a car. To avoid getting battered, he runs into an empty warehouse. There is no background to the cat-and-mouse game, but it is made amply clear that it is the consequence of a deal that has gone wrong.
As Daniel, the fearful man, goes corner to corner of the warehouse, cooping himself up to avoid being seen, he notices the indication of something evil in one of the corners. To his horror, a monstrous creature with saw-like teeth and hooked fingers gains shape. The monster gnaws off the entire ocular region of one of the men. Daniel tries his best to warn the remaining man of the presence of a monster in the closed building, but the latter is not convinced. As they loudly engage in their negotiation over the cause of the first man’s death, the monster pounces on the other man. The evil monster rips the man’s stomach open. Daniel tries to knock him out, but to no avail. Instead, it pushes its sharp fingers inside his legs.
What did Daniel discover from the CCTV Footage?
As Daniel drags his leg and tries to get out of the building, a security guard catches him. He brings him to his cabin to tend to his wound and call the police later. Daniel notices that the entire warehouse is adequately surveilled through the CCTV cameras and the monitor placed in the cabin. The old man keeps his eyes on every corner. When Daniel fails to make the old man believe that there is indeed some evil force in the warehouse, he begs him to show the recent footage.
Daniel rewinds and stops at the junctures where the three men can be seen despite the man’s reluctance. However, the footages show a truth with which he cannot reconcile. It is Daniel who has stabbed the eye of the first man with a rod and prised open the second man’s stomach, which led to his death. In fact, the wound on his leg was made with a knife by the second man as his last attempt to free himself from Daniel. Daniel is devastated by the truth. As he stands there watching the security man call the police, the monster appears again over the old man’s shoulder. Daniel asks it to leave the old man, but it does not. Realizing that it is either him or the monster, Daniel slits his throat and kills himself.
Who and what is the Monster?
Bordering on psychological, the monster is the symbol of Daniel’s repressed instincts, which become a threat when Daniel himself is presented with threats. His ‘monstrous’ urge is a result of his self-preserving mechanism. This is the reason why the monster reappears in the end behind the old security personnel. As the person calls the police to report the murders at the warehouse, Daniel’s instinct is to kill the man, too. However, Daniel has a moral compass. He constantly asks the monster, his intrusive thoughts, to leave as the old man is innocent and is just doing his job.
The Hidden Woman
It is Dan’s turn now. The story is about a large car halting in front of a brick-clad house. The impressive house is the new haven of a mother and son, handed down to them through their familial connection. The house is a gothic wonder, peppered with vintage belongings in every corner. While sifting through the previous owner’s items, the mother gets hold of an antique phonograph. However, the discovery of the phonograph holds the door ajar for the evil forces to surface.
One night, the mother finds her son in the kitchen, sitting in the dark, with a glass of water. However, the son is not alone as she notices a silhouette of a woman behind the boy. Soon she feels a presence around her all the time. Initially owned by the boy’s grandmother, the house is a site of ghostly apparitions that lurk in the dark. In a conversation, the boy shows an old photo of a ballerina and tells his mother that his nanny or grandmother was a ballet dancer. The mother refuses to believe, but the boy says that his grandmother visited him while he had a glass of water in the kitchen the previous night.
The mother’s attempt to part ways with the phonograph turns futile. It keeps reappearing in the house as many times as she puts it in the garbage bin outside. Finally, the mother decides to evacuate with her son. However, seeing a ghastly ballerina dancing her way up the staircase traumatizes her. She never manages to leave the house with her son and remains trapped in it for the rest of her life.
Donna’s Disturbing Tale
Donna’s story is set in a cheap hotel. A lecherous husband has brought his wife to the hotel for a surprise on their anniversary. He is abusive and wants his wife to indulge in a swinging game where they swap partners with another couple at the hotel for a night. The wife is not too keen on accepting the order. But has to oblige in the face of the string of abuses from the other side.
He leaves his wife at the bar table and takes a different woman to his room. Inside the room, the woman undresses him, throws him on the bed with his chest down, and paints a symbol on his back. The man, utterly oblivious to the woman’s intention, enjoys it, thinking it to be an eccentric foreplay. As the man turns around, his eyeballs come out from the sockets in horror as he finds the woman gone and a creepy being sitting on his chest.
What grim fate awaits the abusive husband?
The creepy entity has an ashy countenance and is wearing a crown made of twigs that come all the way down to its eyes. It presses a branding iron triangle against the man’s chest. As he tries to seek help, he sees similar masked entities all around him. Half naked, he runs around the corridors of the hotel, searching for help. An attendant arrives but proves to be in collusion with the cult.
He fails to escape and is escorted back to the room. As he returns to his room, he watches his wife getting ready by the entities for a ritual. The next we know, the man is tied to the bed. As offerings for the ritual, he is being shorn off of his body parts. The wife, leading the sacrament, claims his body parts as a token of weapons he has used to inflict violence on her. For instance, one of his eyes is claimed for his lecherous prying, and his tongue is severed because he never once speaks the truth. In the end, the wife, as a mark of her triumph, skins him alive and carves out his throbbing heart.
The Keychain Man
Sally narrates a story that is heavily loaded with giallo elements. On their way to watch a late-night movie, three friends encounter an enormous popcorn guy at the food counter. The man is so tall that his head shoots offscreen the first time they meet him. The friends leave for their show as the popcorn guy, Gareth, argues with the food court manager. The hall is empty, with only one man watching the film, apart from them. After some time, when one of them is out to use the washroom, he becomes privy to the ruthless killing of the manager by the popcorn guy. He returns to the theatre to stop the movie and warn his friends. This infuriates the other man at the theatre, and he tries to leave but finds the fire exit locked.
The man, overtly haughty and dismissive of the seriousness of the situation, confronts the popcorn guy. The masked popcorn guy strangles him with a keychain. The girl in the friend group is not spared either and is endowed with the most violent death by the killer. One friend manages to be on the run and tries to take shelter in the women’s toilet. He bumps into a lady employee and shows her the gory video of Gareth’s killing spree. Soon, another friend is felled, and the remaining one tries to kill Gareth and steal the keys to the mall. The friend manages to crawl out of the mall past the half-opened shutter, but the lady does not make it out, and she is pulled back inside.
Lore (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
How does the camping night turn awry for the group?
The stories end, and we return to the overarching story of the group around the bonfire. Darwin says that the ghosts have been fed well. However, the group does not quite understand the implications of his words. The following day, they wake up to find Darwin missing and some of their items gone. They return home. Things become apparent when the friends return home. After returning home, an unmindful Sally does not realize that the television is tuned into a news channel that is broadcasting the news of the cinema massacre, with the prime suspect being Gareth.
In the final act, we see Darwin with a separate group who have gathered for yet another ‘immersive’ experience. One of the members narrates the story of a young woman novelist facing an eerie situation of a bird smashing against her glass window. We realize it is Sally. This means that as the previous group narrated stories, the devil fed off the real-life characters that populate the stories. So, the cycle begins once again as the lives of the previous groups coincide with the lives of the characters of the next group’s stories.
