The Lighthouse is a nightmare

The Lighthouse is a nightmare. Horror movie can often be the result of a lifetime of two in isolation. Director Robert Eggers captures this image and brings it to its final consequences in a beautiful black-and-white reconstruction of the desolate lighthouse setting on a hard-to-reach island in the middle of the ocean in New England.

Using a 1.19:1 screen format, as reminiscent of some 1930s German expressionist film, the movie shows the arrival of two guardians at the lighthouse to replace the old garrison: veteran Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) and newcomer Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson).

Wake acts as if he owns the place, holds the key to the entrance to the top of the tower and only he takes care of the light. At Winslow, less noble tasks are reserved, such as feeding the furnace and cleaning the latrines. The old lighthouse keeper has a scary speech, telling the new kid his old assistant went crazy.

Soon we realize this "logic" of madness entering the narrative: Winslow’s erotic fantasies materialize in the form of a mermaid with her detailed anatomy displayed, but also the terrifying visions take over the narrative, to the point where we don’t know if what’s being exhibited is real or a product of hallucination.

Completely altered, the two characters immerse themselves in an extreme intimacy where they dance, sing and almost kiss, but almost kill each other. In a lodging completely taken by the water, they wallow in the mud, and, with the length of the story (the film is 1h 50), we feel uncomfortable with the rawness of the images.

The last fifteen minutes are taken by disturbing images, which sometimes resemble scenes of Buñuel. At this time, the intimacy, very similar to a play, opens to an iconic aesthetic, where archetypal images with mythological inspiration lead to a tragic end to which the hero who dared to steal the fire from the gods was subjected.