In December of 1900, a relief vessel that tended to the Flannan Isles lighthouse west of mainland Scotland arrived six days late due to a bad storm. The three lighthouse keepers who were expected to greet the ship were nowhere to be found. Aside from an overturned kitchen chair and one keeper’s raincoat mysteriously left behind despite the storm, the little island and its buildings remained curiously neat and quiet. The mystery of what happened to the keepers has never been solved, but theories range from rogue waves, to a fight at a dangerous cliff’s edge, to alien abduction. One theory suggests a murderous descent into madness by one of the men. Why would a few short 
weeks on a rock in the middle of the ocean cause otherwise healthy men to go mad? With a nod to the Flannan Isles disappearances, The Lighthouse weaves a visceral yet poetic, stark yet gloomy tale that explores the answer to this very question.
Filmed on the foggy, craggy coast of Nova Scotia but set in 1890s New England, The Lighthouse—shot entirely in black-and-white 35mm film—bombards us from its opening scenes with the rugged images and invasive, booming sounds of a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic. Two lighthouse keepers arrive for their four-week shift and settle into their new routine. The elder keeper, Thomas, is played by the incomparable Willem Dafoe, and the younger, Ephraim, is played surprisingly skillfully and un-annoyingly by Robert Pattinson. The two men have never met before, and it’s Ephraim’s first time as a keeper, which makes for a complicated meet-cute given Thomas’s 
parodic old sailor personality and unceasing demands. But Ephraim has secrets of his own to reveal, and the film soon proves that the island just may as well.
A commanding study in contrasts, The Lighthouse is an unparalleled artistic masterpiece. Yes, for starters, the film’s inkwell filter literally shines a spotlight on texture, with sharp cheekbones shadowed by candlelight, frothy white crests against dark waves tumbling toward shore, and the lighthouse’s startlingly bright beam shining into the black of a stormy sea. However, the contrasts don’t end there. From the back-and-forth of the dialogue between the men, to moments of 
dangerously heightened tension broken up unexpectedly by humor, to the juxtaposition of fantasy-like dreams with the waking nightmare of violently hard labor before the turn of the 20th century, the polarity is palpable. Even the sound is relentless, as the quiet claustrophobia of the men’s situation is periodically interrupted by the lighthouse’s obnoxious foghorn. Director Robert Eggers and his co-writer and brother Max Eggers ultimately subject their audience to a brilliantly uncomfortable whiplash guaranteed to leave us all sore for days.
Much like he did in The VVitch, director Eggers walks a thin line between genres in this film, meandering between an old folktale one moment, a high-tension horror film the next, and even this time throwing in the vibe of a swarthy sea shanty. Perhaps because they borrow from real-life writings of the time, it’s Dafoe’s monologues that 
especially leave me resolved to begin more sentences with “Hark!” and punctuate them with “says I.” And talk about winning insults—I’ll watch the film again just to remember exactly how he used the words “bile” and “bilge” as curses.
But I digress—after all, is this a horror review or is this a horror review? While the film doesn’t deliver as much on the spooky paranormal front as I anticipated, it far surpasses my expectations with much more shocking and disturbing flesh and gore, and a raw depiction of madness in its most terrifying form. And if that doesn’t get your terror-loving goat, The Lighthouse wins as a horror film by leaving its viewers truly and completely unsettled. Adrift, even . . . says I.
SpecialK Verdict: Hark! Rustle ye from yer creature comforts, yer click-screens and yer fast-foods, and absorb this tale of times long past—when timbermen swung axes, wickies shoveled coal, and brave souls gobbled down rations of taters for dinner. Witness this tale of Neptune’s soldiers, sparring with one another and within themselves all at once, and just pray that yer gut will last, says I. [Translation: Don’t miss this one.]
The Lighthouse opened in select theaters nationwide on Friday, October 18.
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