The Lighthouse (2019)

Directed by: Robert Eggers | 109 minutes | drama | Actors: Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, Valeriia Karaman, Logan Hawkes, Kyla Nicolle, Shaun Clarke, Pierre Richard, Preston Hudson, Jeffrey Cruts

Seagulls shrieking, isolation, silence, storm, madness. Seen in this way, the plot of the surreal black-and-white horror film ‘The Lighthouse’ is not even very alienating. Two sailors are sent to a remote island for several weeks to work as a lighthouse keeper. Once there, madness is constantly lurking. Sounds like The Shining Lighthouse? The Cabin on the Island? Lighthouse Fever?

Fortunately, in the second film by director Robert Eggers (who previously made the fantastic witch horror ‘The Witch’), that madness is worked out in a completely original way. While the idea is not even very earth-shattering: two lighthouse keepers (excellent roles by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson) slowly turn around when they spend a few weeks at the end of the nineteenth century – completely isolated – on a small island where the wind always seems to blow and the illusion it soon beats the ratio.

Thomas (Dafoe) is the experienced hand, Ephraim (Pattinson) the youngster who plunges into this remote darkness for the first time. On the island, frustrations quickly run high: Tom farts hard all day long, while Ephraim, to his anger, is mostly saddled with the dirty jobs. The only beacon for Ephraim is the lighthouse of the lighthouse. Problem: It’s Tom’s domain, and therefore strictly off limits to Ephraim. And let that unlimited curiosity be especially difficult to contain on an island where nothing else is left to the imagination.

The result is a film that will not be for everyone, captured in beautiful black and white. ‘The Lighthouse’ is alienating, surreal and completely elusive. What exactly is it about? Great question. Are we in a portal of hell? Should these men atone for their past sins? There are hardly any answers, all the more questions. Perhaps the film isn’t about anything at all: the big nothing, caught in dazzling horror.

Anyway: the claustrophobic ‘The Lighthouse’ continues to rumble afterward for a while: see how you can get that endless wind from between your ears. A film that only takes you out of the grip when the light has gone out and the wind has died down. In any case, Robert Eggers proves his talent with a second film that is barely inferior to his debut: a filmmaker who has put himself on the map with a completely idiosyncratic style that either repels or invites. A safe middle ground seems to be a superfluous utopia in his preliminary oeuvre.

Whether you pull off ‘The Lighthouse’ will presumably depend on whether you’re willing to ditch that middle ground for the rambunctious side trails. And otherwise the film can at least live on in the collective internet memory, with enough memematerial for years to come (if only Willem Dafoe screaming ‘HAAARK’ very loudly). You have to see it to experience it.