The Lighthouse

2020 • 109 minutes

About this movie

From Robert Eggers, the visionary filmmaker behind the modern horror masterpiece The Witch, comes this hypnotic and hallucinatory tale of two lighthouse keepers (Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson) on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s. As an approaching storm threatens to sweep them from the rock and strange apparitions emerge from the fog, each man begins to suspect that the other has become dangerously unmoored.

Ratings and reviews

It is good to see the return of the "low concept" film. The Lighthouse, as a reviewer pointed out above, has more than the odd tingling of Eraserhead about it and yet it's nothing alike. It is that hinterland between reality and delusion that creates the disturbing plane both films operate on. There is significant myth and symbolism involved here but I'm buggered if I can nail down much beyond the Prometheus myth but even that's re-imagined in a nautical motif. Some films can pull this kind of surrealism off while others fall flat on their clown noses. This is the former. It truly is a fantastic piece of cinema, one that you can actually smell.

This film certainly won’t be for everyone. There is no big reveal - nor massive revelation you are anticipating. It is simply just the darkest depths of the human psyche and a deep journey into schizophrenia. In saying that, it does this exceptionally well.

Absolutely terrible, horrendous movie. Rotten tomatoes' score means nothing. More than 1.5 hours wasted that I'm never getting back.