The Lighthouse Review

Here's a challenging movie to review. "The Lighthouse" is a movie I saw as fast as physically possible, which for me meant waiting around until it became available to general audiences. In initially debuted the Cannes Film Festival in May of this year, then bounced around to several more film festivals, with Toronto back in September being its other major stop. It finally hit normal theaters on October 18, but just in a few theaters. It expanded this past weekend into about 500 theaters where I was lucky enough to see one of my local theaters being one of those 500. Sure, rave reviews out of the festival circuit was something that made me hopeful, but the reason I had my eyes on this one is because it is the sophomore effort from director Robert Eggers, whose first directorial effort was the 2016 film "The Witch." If you know me well enough, or at least have followed this blog for a while, you've probably heard me raving about "The Witch" at one point in time. As the metaphor goes, "The Witch" is one of those movies that ages like fine wine. I enjoyed it quite a bit the first time I watched it, but the more I've seen it, the better it gets. If you ask me what my favorite horror movie is from this current decade, there's no hesitation. "The Witch." So of course I wanted to see what this guy did next.

Because I was so excited for this movie based on the name of the director alone, I had zero desire to see any marketing. Due to it being a smaller, independent film, it's not a trailer that came up much at all during my theatrical movie adventures. So I am happy to report that I successfully avoided everything about this movie. The only things I knew about it were the cast and crew, the Rotten Tomatoes score (which has been hovering around in the 90s), and the most obvious of it all -- it had something to do with a lighthouse. That's it. If you are one who also likes smaller, independent horror films and/or you loved "The Witch," I'm going to give you permission to exit this review right now. This won't be a spoiler review, but if you're on board, "The Lighthouse" is a movie that is experienced best when you know absolutely nothing. It's quite the experience. If you want to know my opinion real quick, it has my stamp of approval. So there you go. Now you can take that information and head out to the theater. Come back to this review after you've seen the movie because I'm certain you'll have a lot you want to talk about. And I'll be happy to oblige because there's a lot I want to talk about, too. And I'll get to some of that in this review. Although I do plan on treading lightly here.

For those of you who require more information than just knowing the movie has my stamp of approval, or you've now come back after closing this review and going to see this movie, let's proceed forward and try to figure out exactly what this movie has to offer. Because, yeah, this is quite the intense movie. The last movie I reviewed was "Zombieland: Double Tap" and this movie here could not be more different than that one. "Zombieland" is the type of movie where you kick back and relax. "The Lighthouse" is a movie where you need to sit forward and turn your brain to full capacity, because you're going to need all of it to crack this one. And then some. Multiple viewings are most likely required to understand everything or to fully appreciate what took place. Unfortunately for me, I have only seen this once and now I have to figure out how to even write a review that does this movie justice. As a friend of mine asked me after we got out of the screening, "How in the world are you going to review that movie?" I have no idea. But we're going to make an attempt. And in making said attempt, you have to understand that this is a preliminary review. My opinion of this will likely change over time, but I have to say something right out of the gate to convince you to go see it.

And we're going to start here with the basic premise of this movie, which is a lot more simple than I was anticipating. Again, I didn't know exactly what to expect, but I didn't realize that the movie only had three cast members, one of which only shows up for a brief period of time. For the most part, it's just Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson playing two guys who work at a lighthouse, with the setting being the late 1800s. Dafoe is the older guy who's been there for quite some time while Pattinson is the new recruit who is essentially getting his bearings straight as to what exactly he's doing. Because of this, Dafoe is the crazier man who enjoys treating Pattinson like a slave or a servant, making him do all of the dirty work. All of this was both physically and mentally exhausting for Pattinson, which caused him to start slowly devolving into madness. Dafoe, on the other hand, was already completely mad, but seemed to relish in all of it. This is all setting up for quite the power struggle. Was Pattinson going to simply submit himself to all of this or was he going to crack and start to fight back? And if he does the latter, how is Dafoe going to respond? And, yes, you guessed it, that's as far as I'm willing to go when it comes to describing the plot. Rest assured that there's a lot more to this than that.

The first thing I want to talk about with this movie is the technical side of the movie. I believe the setting of the movie is the late 1800's and Eggers did his best to make that feel authentic as possible. It starts with this being a black and white film with a more square-ish aspect ratio. I'm not exactly sure what the said aspect ratio is, but it's close to being a square. Something that was made for an older TV rather than a modern theater screen. Some people might call this a gimmick, but I see this as Eggers wanting this to feel more old-fashioned. On top of that, all of the dialogue is taken from old sailors' journals and stuff like that, so that Eggers can get the proper style of dialogue here. So if you've seen "The Witch," it's a similar thing as that movie. Eggers likes having his movie look and sound authentic to the time period that it's set in. That I can appreciate. He might alienate some viewers who only watch movies in 21st Century American English, but the patient are rewarded. I really like this authentic feeling I get when I watch his films. It makes it feel like a realistic experience that adds to the emotion and the intensity, which in turn elevates it above the traditional drama/horror. Eggers doesn't care to follow modern conventions, which is respectable.

I will confess that there were times where the dialogue was so thick and complex, especially with Dafoe's character, that I got a bit lost. But it's not the type of experience where I storm out of the theater calling the movie the worst thing to ever exist simply because my brain had a hard time comprehending everything. Rather it makes me want to buy the movie when it comes out so that I can flip on the subtitles in order to catch things that I may have missed. I have a feeling that will help enhance my experience. On that note, I'm looking at Eggers' next film project on IMDb and there's a movie called "The Northman" listed that is a Viking revenge saga taking place in 10th Century Iceland. After that, there's a movie called "The Knight" that's a medieval epic of sorts. I'm really excited for both of these as I totally expect Eggers to continue his style with making his films feel authentic. If the general audiences don't take to it, then who cares. I'm more than willing to be a part of this niche. Everyone else can go watch their jump scare fests or mindless slashers. I enjoy a movie that's willing to have a lot more meat to its bones. It might give me an intellectual challenge, but in the long run that's for the best as long as it continues to feel authentic and real.

Two more things about the tone of this movie. With this first one, I'm going to get really technical here. There's a thing that I learned where sometimes in a movie the score or soundtrack of the film doubles as something the characters are listening to themselves rather than just something that the audience is listening to. Think "Guardians of the Galaxy" where Star Lord is listening to his tapes. I can't remember the name of this term. That's why when I said that I'm going to get real technical, I hope you sensed a bit of sarcasm. If not, well now you do. Whatever said term is called, "The Lighthouse" used it a lot with the blaring sounds coming from the lighthouse. It felt like one of those Hans Zimmer scores where it sounds like he fell asleep at the organ, but the sound was coming from the lighthouse in this instance. The constant blaring really made this creepy and intense as you slowly become more and more unsettled as to what's about to happen. The second thing I want to mention in regards to the tone is the pace. It's purposely slow. Again, this might alienate some people who wanted a traditional jump scare fest, but I thought the slow nature of the film helped things build properly to a satisfying conclusion.   

That's about as far as I can get into this movie without tripping over actual spoilers, so with the rest of this I'm going to proceed with even more caution. Because, yeah, things happen. Some things I was anticipating based on where the plot was taking me. Other things were so bizarre that I'm not sure what to think about them. But it wasn't like "Midsommar" this year where I felt many things were happening for the sake of shock value. Everything that happened in this movie felt like it was happening for a specific reason and I have no idea what some of those reasons were. When the movie finished, no one in my screening dared to move. Usually I'm the last one to exit the theater because I like to sit and ponder about what I saw while the credits are rolling while everyone else gets up and leaves the second the first credits show up. But in this instance, no one did. Everyone was stunned into silence and everyone felt it was more necessary to turn to their neighbor and talk about what just happened rather than get up and walk to their car. And Eggers spends no time babysitting his audience. He just expects you to figure things out on your own. Thus this movie is one that elicits a conversation, thus helping the experience last far beyond the end credits.

I'm not going to talk about any of those themes. What I will say is that my initial reaction is that this is a movie that doesn't dive quite as deep as "The Witch." Although in fairness to "The Lighthouse," that's an awfully high bar to jump over, one that I wasn't expecting it to accomplish. However, it's also worth noting that "The Witch" took a long time for it to fully sink in for me. I loved it when I walked out. I loved it when I reviewed it. But at the time I didn't give it a perfect score. But three years later, there is no question in my mind that it absolutely deserves it and it will be super high up on my list of favorite movies of the decade because it's a movie that took time for me to fully appreciate. Even though I don't think "The Lighthouse" will ever top "The Witch," I fully realize that I need to give it time. But I'm not going to wait a year or two to review it. So I'm going to do this weird thing where I am going to give what I call a tentative score. And who knows. Maybe I'll return to this movie one day. That's a thing I'm strongly considering when it comes to "The Witch." I won't make any guarantees. But one of these Halloweens that's a thing that I would love to do. Anyways, with "The Lighthouse," my tentative score for it is a 9/10, but just know that could change.