REVIEW: The Lighthouse

More cars than you’d expect line the parking lot of Marcus Theaters in Orland Park, IL. Especially for 9pm on a Monday.

I tend to avoid Marcus. The recliners suck, it never smells good, and there’s an air of cheapness to the whole affair. I demand more from my movie watching experience these days, especially at $12 a flick. But Marcus is the only place nearby that’ll show the deep cuts: fathom events, Sundance kids, even local fair. You can be cheap when you’re the only place in town and every cinephile within 15 miles comes to Marcus Theaters. When I showed up a parish full of nuns walked out the front doors.  

Sometime in May I read an article on Deadline about a film starring Willem Dafoe as a 19th century lighthouse keeper. Attached was a promotional image in black and white. Needless to say my pretentious butt was hooked. Avoiding all promotional materials I threw The Lighthouse in my IMDb watchlist and waited. As time went on, I eventually learned it was being produced by A24 and would co-star that dude from Twilight, but I purposefully kept my research to a minimum. I wanted to give it as much chance to surprise me as I possibly could. I didn’t even look up the genre.

The ticket guy directs me to theater 3 and the ambiance is just as bleak as I expected. There are only a few of us at this showing: a gentleman in his 60s wearing overalls (who was likely as blindsided as I was about to be), a younger man furiously scribbling in a notebook (hello fellow blogger), and someone who bizarrely chose to sit in the very front row of an empty theater. This is who The Lighthouse attracts. My people.

Coke commercial. Trailers. Logos. Start.

From the first image I am awash in bizarre influences. The Lighthouse isn’t just black and white, it’s black and white and square. Straight up Instagram level square. Savvy viewers know this is an homage to early cinema. Early early early cinema. We’re talking pre-sound baby. The Passion of Joan of Arc shazz. On a mechanics level the choice makes everything feel claustrophobic and surreal. Mix in the effects work and it’s downright dreamlike. A perfect accompaniment for men descending into madness, which is apparently what The Lighthouse is about.

The second thing I noticed was the soundtrack. Moaning dirges reference the theatrical tragedies of ancient Greece. A fact I only know because I have a humanities major. It’s so loud that my seat trembles with the low tone. I start to see the myths: Prometheus and some sort of oceanic prophet figure. What it all means is beyond me on this first watch. Anything? It’s hard to tell if The Lighthouse is way too smart for my dumb little idiot brain or way too proud of itself for being abundantly cultured. Probably a combination of the two.

The performances are electric. Dafoe rips into these monologues that would put Captain Ahab to shame. Robert Pattinson is so earnest and wild that I stopped calling him that dude from Twilight. Together they have this unbreakable masculine energy but never fail to be terrified of themselves and the world around them. It’s gripping commentary by two masters of the craft.

Despite the commitment to the time period and use of classical aesthetics The Lighthouse feels like a modern horror film. The sense of violence, pacing, and theme, the way it blends genres and rejects traditional structure, director Robert Eggers is making something very new here. It’s oddly accessible, totally unsettling, and still arthouse as heck.

Personally, and I’m talking personal tastes here people, it didn’t hit me hard enough to get the illustrious Isaaclastname 5/5. In a lot of ways it felt more like a deep thought experiment than entertainment. The ambiguity of The Lighthouse makes the story equal parts intriguing and difficult to connect with. Maybe I’d feel different on a 2nd watch? I just left the theater more impressed than impacted, and I think I should be both if I’m gonna give something a perfect score.

Regardless, The Lighthouse is a one of a kind film with more passion in a frame than most movies have in their entire runtime. It’s the sort of flick your college professors would gush over if they weren’t above watching horror movies. Absolutely worth the trip to stinky ol’ Marcus Theaters in Orland Park, IL.

4/5

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