Rating of
3.5/4
Here Be Dragons
Chris Kavan - wrote on 01/05/20
Robert Eggers has joined Ari Aster as the two kings of art house horror. My taste in the genre has, like a fine wine, grown more refined with age. These days it takes a truly unique and unsettling film to affect me, and Eggers did that with The Witch and he has done it again with The Lighthouse.
Eggers takes two chances with how he chose to shoot this film - and they both work. First, the aspect ratio is 1.19:1 - nearly square, giving the film a claustrophobic effect that really works with the setting. Second is the custom black and white (used with a specific cyan filter) that gives the film a truly vintage look to match its time period. Technically, it's probably one of the most impressive films of the year. But where The Lighthouse truly shines is in the casting as both Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are exceptional.
With just two actors (for the most part), you need to find people with chemistry and with character. While Pattinson is probably still best known for playing a shiny vampire in the Twilight series, he's truly come full circle, taking on much more interesting and challenging roles, in such films as The Rover, The Lost City of Z and High Life. And Dafoe has such a range, appearing in blockbusters like Spider-Man and John Carter while flexing his acting chops from everything from Antichrist to The Florida Project. Both actors have proven they're not afraid to take chances and here they up their game yet again.
The film follows two men named Thomas - an older hard-bitten veteran and a young, untrained lost soul. Both men find themselves on a lonely four-week stint at a lighthouse that may as well be on another planet. You know things are going to be rough when one of the first scenes is Dafoe literally farting in Pattinson's face. The two men seem to have little in common. The elder run a tight - and very cleanly - ship, but also seems steeped in lore and rituals. The younger is the opposite who wants to follow the rules but chafes under the constant pressure and couldn't care less about the legends he hears about. All the while in these early days, or perhaps weeks, their small world seems to be brimming with something unnatural as visions and dreams (nightmares?) abound.
Things come to a head after the younger Thomas lashes out a seagull in anger - beating it to a bloody pulp. If he were to believe his elder partner, these birds hold the souls of sailors lost at sea and killing it seems to bring about the anger of the sea - as a sudden storm sweeps the island. As both the two characters succumb to the lure of ready drink - it brings about both the best and worst as we realize both men are hiding something.
The Lighthouse is far from a standard horror fantasy. Much like The Witch, it is a folktale as much as anything, as well as a study on how isolation and mistrust can easily lead to much worse. While the film plays on serious themes, it balances this with some choice scenes - often when the characters are quite drunk and neither Dafoe or Pattinson get shy about really letting go. It's not exactly a film I would see general audiences gushing over, but if you want a unique fantasy/horror experience, it's hard to think of something better out there.
