Day one. Here’s my movie content review...
Choose the one person at your place of employment who annoys you more than any of your other co-workers, and then imagine being stuck alone with this person on an island for several weeks. This is the fate that greets Ephraim Winslow, a former timberman played by Robert Pattinson, as he arrives at the remote setting during the late 1800s for a contract job as a lighthouse keeper (wickie) with the unkempt and uncouth Thomas Wake, played by Willem Dafoe. The older man, a veteran wickie, orders Ephraim to perform arduous menial labor duties, like cleaning the living quarters, replacing fuel, and making repairs, while also maintaining sole access to the lighthouse itself and refusing to allow his younger associate to tend to the light.
The weeks that follow turn into a fever dream of exhaustion, tempered irritation, and alcohol intoxication as Ephraim toils away, fights off an intrusive seagull, and, in his salvaged moments of spare time, has fantasy visions of a mermaid. His obsession to discover what goes on at the top of the lighthouse weighs down on his interactions with Thomas, and ultimately places him at the frayed ends of his sanity, but he may not be the only one on the island who is losing his mind.
The idea of being in never-ending close quarters with a person who grates on the nerves would have been, in its own right, more than enough story inspiration for The Lighthouse, the new psychological horror film from director Robert Eggers, whose 2015 feature-length debut, The Witch, is one of the most unnerving works of cinema in the new millennium. The narrative is conveyed through starkly gloomy black-and-white images and a maddeningly narrow 1.19:1 aspect ratio, as if to accentuate the notion that there is no escape for our two antihero protagonists from constant contact with each other. Eggers has more expansive plans in mind for his restricted square-shaped palette, however, so prospective viewers should brace themselves for generous helpings of Greek mythology references, surprisingly unrefined humor, and even a myriad of disturbing visuals inspired by the prose of H.P. Lovecraft.
Pattinson, who has pushed the envelope with darkly adventurous roles since he was catapulted to the mainstream early in his career with the popular Twilight films, delivers a tour de force performance in this uncomfortable tale of rival personalities and unreliable narrators. A coarsely bearded Dafoe matches him step for step with interactional mayhem as a foul character who would have edged into parody under lesser hands. As with the director's first film, which took its dialogue from actual written records of its era, the accents and conversations in this movie resound with an air of authenticity.
With regard to locations and stage sets, attention to detail was the name of the game in The Witch, and Eggers ups the ante here. All of the buildings seen in The Lighthouse, including the titular structure, were constructed especially for the film. Creative special effects, which are somehow bestowed with a greater immediacy in the black-and-white format, result in images of tentacles, mermaid fins, and tattered flesh that will not soon be forgotten by any adventurous moviegoer who is willing to step into this stormy saltwater fray.
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