Taken at face value alone, The Lighthouse tells a story about being stranded on an island with your asshole boss (Willem Dafoe, naturally). All you (you being Robert Pattinson, congratulations!) want is to start over and make some money from keeping watch over a lighthouse. But between shit-flinging and back-breaking labor, whatever you're running from definitely isn't as bad as your new, gassy, manipulative employer.
This is the longstanding horror nestled within Robert Eggers's new ghost story. After capturing the gruesome and god-fearing hysteria of witchcraft in his 2016 debut, , it was clear he already had a firm (and twisted) grasp on the supernatural. But with The Lighthouse (out Friday), written with his brother Max, the director sharpens his talent for capturing period-specific (19th century in this instance) horror that reveals man's chronic perverseness.
The Lighthouse tells more than a simple seaside scary story, but at first, the black-and-white, square-shot film is totally overtaken by its nautical stereotypes (a model-esque siren with Pantene-perfect hair, and an old man with a limp who drinks to excess) and heavy-handed accents (the authentic version of this). If you pay close enough attention, though, you'll find hyper attention to detail in every scene as the movie unfolds into a truly mesmerizing, oddball concoction of horror and mythology. It's a witch's brew of confusion, hallucinatory paranoia, ennui-induced hysteria, and strange sexual fantasies. And it's funny, too!
Seagulls flock the island as two grumpy strangers take to the secluded, titular light for four weeks. The film is divided into three parts: the first follows Robert Pattinson's Ephraim Winslow as he performs manual labor and fights with a seagull, which would be a beautiful movie all in itself. The middle third traps Ephraim and Willem Dafoe's Thomas Wake in a storm as they subsequently getting super wasted together. The movie concludes as you realize that you've actually had no idea what these characters' intentions have been the whole time, and whether or not they're experiencing a nightmarish hell or a terrifying pipe dream. Eggers pivots perspectives expertly here: first you don't trust Winslow, then you don't trust Wake, then you trust no one. The end result, without spoiling things, is fabulously unnerving. Pattinson and Dafoe do a wonderful, comical job of embodying two characters that are completely untrustworthy narrators. You want to believe their lies. And you do.
The ghoulishness that underscores The Lighthouse is not so deeply hidden underneath waves of nautical symbolism and lore. When Winslow arrives on the island and settles into his room, he stumbles upon a carved wooden mermaid figurine. He pockets it and promptly has regular sexual fantasies of sirens throughout the rest of the film. The screaming siren he envisions is a harbinger of chaos who's contrasted against the crank that is Winslow's partner-in-lighthouse-crime. And speaking of that crank: there certainly exists a... sexual tension between these two men, which, frankly is just naturally bound to cross one's mind if you're stuck on an island for more than a minute. There's one moment when Willem and Pattinson get plastered and almost kiss, but push each other away and begin to fist fight instead. It's a portrait of isolation sparring with masculinity.
Part of the fun with The Lighthouse is finding the mythological gems Eggers has hidden; doing so will deeply enhance your appreciation for the movie's lore. Winslow, it turns out, is really named Thomas Howard; he's a man who fled his home after a not-so-mysterious lumber accident. His character is a trickster who craves to know the secret of the lighthouse-one that's believed to be lit with the fire of St. Elmo. It smacks of the Greek myth of Prometheus, who, too, desires fire and is punished for tricking Zeus in the end. Pattinson's Howard succumbs to a similar fate by the film's conclusion (remember those birds we mentioned?) It's macabre and enlightening all at once: Pattinson embodies the hero we want to root for, who flies too close to the sun. He's a brilliant, stubborn drunk that espouses the slightest pity; he even perfects the bizarre and disconcerting Maine accent Eggers asks of him (seriously, you're going to want to luxuriate in this accent).
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