Year: 2019
Country: U.S.
Subgenre: Psychological Horror
Runtime: 109 minutes
Director: Robert Eggers
Casual viewers and non-horror film fans got introduced to the direction of Robert Eggers this year with the release of The Northman, a saga take on the Amleth (Hamlet) story. While that film has some strong horror elements in it, it is nothing compared to Eggers' previous two films. In 2016, he gave his The VVitch: A New-England Folk Tale and in 2019, The Lighthouse was released. A New Englander by birth (he is from Lee, New Hampshire), he knows his north Atlantic stuff! The story revolves around two "wickies," a colloquial name for lighthouse keepers, tending a light on a small, lonely and isolated island off the north New England coast. While the story can be seen as a deep reworking some Poe writing (principally an unfinished story also called "The Light-House"), the story is so much more. This is psychological horror at it's finest, made even more beautiful and menacing by the choice of aspect ratio (1.19:1) and the black and white color format. Flashes of various New England writers from Melville to Lovecraft (even Emerson & Thoreau) can be found in the film; no doubt, also a number of true accounts of terrible fates that befell real lighthouse keepers in the 19th century. This is a story about practicality and madness (possibly one versus the other??); you don't watch film like this to find out what happens, this is about the experience. It's deeply unsettling and yet impossible to look away (well, unless you just happen to be a hard-core slasher fan who couldn't care a whip about philosophy in a horror film). It is also a film about the dangers of isolation, much like The Shining; but also about the dangers of distrust caused by an unquiet mind. If you are a fan of films with a minimalist cast, it doesn't get any more stripped down than this. With just two principles, Willem Dafoe & Robert Pattinson, both playing characters named Thomas, the acting here is terrific! The Lighthouse comes highly recommended for at least one viewing by yours truly, who has seen it half a dozen times. It is also one of those rare horror films to have garnered an Oscar nomination nod (for Cinematography--beaten by 1917 which is a shame! [And I love Roger Deakins!]).
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