The Lighthouse

★★★★★

If you’re at all familiar with director Robert Eggers’ debut feature The Witch - a subtle horror depicting the destruction of a 17th century Puritan family after their youngest is snatched into the woods by a witch - you’ll go into The Lighthouse knowing not to expect any jump scares or other cliché horror tropes. Instead, Eggers awes his audience with a gradual descent into violent mayhem.

Co-written by the director and his brother, Max Eggers, The Lighthouse is set in late 19th century New England and follows the tale of two lighthouse keepers, AKA ‘wickies,’ played voraciously by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson who begin to lose their sanity in a spectacular fashion after becoming stranded at the titular lighthouse on a remote island.

Dafoe is a force to be reckoned with as an irritable and demanding boss who appears to enjoy the power he wields over Pattinson as his second a little too much, forcing him to take on the most taxing jobs on the island and openly laughing in the face of his suffering. Pattinson steps up to the bar that Dafoe sets however, playing a slightly mysterious ex-timberman running away from his sordid past, and at first acts as the audience’s proxy- though we soon come to realise that he is far from a reliable narrator.

When the men realise that the ship that was supposed to take them away from this unforgiving lighthouse may never be coming, they begin to drown their sorrows in booze, blood and all sorts of other body fluids until they lose count of how many days they’ve actually been there: ‘How long have we been on this rock? Five weeks? Two days? Help me to recollect,’ asks Dafoe’s character darkly during one unsettling scene.

"Eggers awes his audience with a gradual descent into violent mayhem"

Eggers’ choice to shoot the film in black and white along with the period accurate (and at times unintelligible) seaman’s dialect effectively drags the viewer into the time period and, with its suffocating 1.19:1 aspect ratio, makes us feel just as boxed-in and claustrophobic as the wickies themselves. The Oscar nominated cinematography looks gorgeous on the big screen, and certain shots seem as though they could be actual photographs from the time.

The sound design is similarly effective in placing us in the characters shoes with squawking seagulls, a piercingly repetitive fog horn and stormy waves and rain battering against the rocks and windows, emphasising the chaotic and increasingly disturbing scenes unfolding.

The horror itself comes not just from the situation of being stranded in the middle of the ocean with dwindling supplies that the characters find themselves in, but also from unnerving dream sequences and some grisly and nebulous supernatural visions that Pattinson’s character experiences before the cabin fever and excess alcohol drives the wickies to committing horrifying acts themselves. One particular shot evokes another horror masterpiece about isolation activating insanity when one character limps menacingly after another with an axe- presumably a deliberate reference to Kubrick’s The Shining.

The Lighthouse is very much its own beast however, with one of the most original screenplays and set of visuals that we’ve seen in horror for a while. Though this level of bizarreness and originality may make the film polarising and even inaccessible for some viewers (I wouldn’t recommend seeing this one with your grandmother), it overall sets the film apart from everything else coming out right now in the most memorable and impressive of ways, and I have no doubt in my mind that horror fans and general film lovers alike will not be forgetting about it anytime soon.

The Lighthouse is now showing in Edinburgh at Filmhouse, The Cameo Picturehouse, The ODEON and Vue Cinemas.