Imagine a nightmare roommate scenario. You know the type: farts loudly, chews food with their mouth open, never flushes after dropping a deuce in the toilet. Now add in some Lovecraftian tentacle porn, drunkenly sung sea shanties, and plenty of nautical lore, both mystical and superstitious. Got it? Yeah, this doesn’t even begin to scrape the surface of Robert Eggers' sophomore film. Relying heavily on isolation, dread, and a sense of supreme unease, The Lighthouse is a glorious mind-fuck of psychological proportions.
That said, the film reminds me quite a bit of Repo Man, with Willem Dafoe being the wise (or just crazy) old “mentor” in the vein of Bud and Robert Pattison playing the role of the neophyte Otto. Of course the setting is far removed from the urban sprawl of Los Angeles, replaced by eternal sea brine dampness, lottsa muck, and sqawking gull guano. But it's no less surreal than the cult classic from 1984.
This film, however, unfolds without a hint as to the time period, but Moby Dick era America is a safe bet. It also fails to clue us into the time lapses that occur throughout the story, thus you never know how long our intrepid “wickers” have been tending the titular desolate beacon. In fact the story never really allows for any kind of distinction between reality and vivid hallucination. To this end the film is anything but even-keeled.
In terms of acting, both Dafoe and Pattinson deliver tour de force performances, with the former being the best rendition of a cinematical pirate since Robert Newton and the latter bringing his best JFK, spewing a thick New England drawl laden with circumstance.
When all is said and done one is taken on a delirious journey culminating with an ending that seems somewhat abstruse yet serves to further blur the divide between fantasy and real life.
Rating: 4/5
RIYL: Ravenous (1999); The Haunting (1963); The Shining (1980); The Wind (2019)
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