![]() ![]() We do get a bit of a window into him with the sound design – Pattinson frequently reacts to non-diagetic sound, sounds that only he and we, the audience, can hear. ![]() Most horror is designed to attack the audience with jumps and discomfort, but this film attacks Pattinson’s character instead, and we watch him go mad entirely from the outside, so it doesn’t get under your skin in nearly the same way something like The Witch or Hereditary does. ![]() The whole thing is quite easy to take at face value – Pattinson’s hallucinations are so ridiculous and the rest of the plot is quite straightforward if you accept both men’s strange behavior, so there isn’t a really trippy element to it. The Lighthouse was sold mostly as a psychological horror film, but it’s not scary. That said, the film itself is so much more driven by its unique visual language and its stellar performances driven so much more by energy than actual words the dialogue itself doesn’t really matter. I’m really looking forward to subtitles here. Like his stellar 2016 debut The Witch, The Lighthouse is steeped in the language and most obscure folklore of its location. Writer/director Robert Eggers’ ear for writing believable period dialogue is obviously beyond compare, partially because nobody else is trying to do it. The lighting and Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography make outstanding use of color’s absence to generate, if nothing else, some truly striking images. This is one of the highest contrast movies to come out in several years. It was shot to resemble German Expressionist film with an almost square 1.19:1 aspect ratio and in black and white – that’s not a post-production conversion, they dug up camera lenses from as long ago as 1912 to get it how they wanted within the camera, although they obviously did work in post to deepen the shadows. The Lighthouse puts a lot of energy into presenting as more weird than it is. The elder keeper spends the entire night shift with the glorious holy light at the top of the tower and leaves all the hard day labor to his apprentice, who quickly loses his mind. ![]() In The Lighthouse, two lighthouse keepers (Willem Dafoe and Pattinson) set up on a remote island off the coast of New England for a four-week assignment. Guy Lodge of Variety gave the film a negative review stating the film is "a bleak nugget of Welsh maritime history is given a Gothic spin by British filmmaker Chris Crow, to resolute but less-than-gripping effect".9/10 A few weeks after Joker brought the “we live in a society” meme to incredibly vivid life, Robert Eggers and A24 one-upped it by bringing the mad munchkin viral video to theaters in The Lighthouse, which sees Robert Pattinson at one point scream, “You’re not God or my boss or my father!” Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter described the film as "tensely atmospheric" and "benefits immeasurably from the powerful performances by Jones and Jibson". Noel Murray of The Los Angeles Times gave the film a positive review stating, "Jones and Jibson (the latter of whom also worked on the script) play this material like an intimate theatre piece, finding the finer nuances in their characters' simmering animosity". James Berardinelli of Reelviews gave the film a positive review stating "the high production values, excellent acting, and strong writing make this a cut above what is often accorded this sort of release pattern". The film has a 71% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes with seven reviews. The film was released in the United Kingdom on 8 July 2016 and in the United States on 6 July 2018. After a storm strands the men, they begin developing cabin fever and slowly lose their minds. In 1801, Thomas Howell and Thomas Griffith are stationed at Smalls Island Lighthouse to man the lighthouse 25 miles from land in the Irish Sea. The film is based on the Smalls Lighthouse incident which occurred in 1801. The Lighthouse is a 2016 British psychological thriller drama film directed by Chris Crow and written by Paul Bryant, Chris Crow and Michael Jibson. ![]()
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