Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson in THE LIGHTHOUSE. Image courtesy TIFF.

Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson in THE LIGHTHOUSE. Image courtesy TIFF.

I would begin this review with the words, “If you’d had said in 2008 that Robert Pattinson was starring in a 4H (homoerotic high-horror hentai¹) with Willem Dafoe, I’d have said you were out of your mind,” but then I remembered Dafoe is sort of the Nicolas Cage of 90’s cocaine noir.

THE LIGHTHOUSE, director Rob and writer Mark Eggers’ follow up to their 2015 success, THE WITCH, takes high horror to places we didn’t think we want to go, and probably still don’t²  But it’s mesmerizing because of its failures andsuccesses.

A two-man play filmed on Eastman Double-X 5222 (35mm black and white), the tall and narrow 1.19:1 frame aspect emphasizes the cramped space where Ephraim Winslow (Pattinson) carries out his chores for the lighthouse keeper, Thomas Wake (Dafoe).  Here in the seclusion and loneliness, strange things happen—no, not the masturbation; that’s expected.  As the storms build, Ephraim begins to see things—maybe real, maybe not.  A lumberjack in his previous life, Ephraim has visions of floating timber.  The vertigo-inducing horizontal aspect and the eerily moonlit dancing logs evoke Busby Berkeley by way of David Lynch.

Like most lighthouse keepers, the men eat, drink, sleep, and even defecate in the same quarters—the washroom and bedroom are one.  Naturally, bodily humor abounds.  Pissing, masturbating, and farting punctuate stretches of silence.  When the men get drunk, they shout, stomp, fight, cuddle, and then some.

Ephraim finds in his mattress a small wood carving, resembling a mermaid, left by the previous keeper’s assistant. This totem pairs with visions of the mermaid, whose shrieks resemble that of the seagulls hovering around the lighthouse.

A black ooze then bubbles up into voids, courses through plumbing.  I suppose it’s meant to represent bodily fluids, punctuated by a myriad of phallic imagery—logs, counterweights, and the like.  After finding a dead seagull in the black sludge, he grabs and smashes another against the rocks, repeatedly.  This angers the sea gods.

In the directorial Q&A, Eggers bloviates about the importance of historical accuracy, but his choices betray him. Around the midpoint of the film we notice Ephraim’s coveralls read “United States Lighthouse Service”. This and many of the other details Eggers claims he spent years poring over coexist on a single Wikipedia entry—all but one.

The film is set in the 1890’s, but the Lighthouse Service wasn’t founded until 1910, by which time lighthouses started going electric.  However immaterial to the film, his flippant responses to audience questions—save for admitting that the idea came on a whim—suggest the director rides on the success of others around him.

Fortunately for Eggers, two fantastic actors buoy the film. Dafoe practically chews the floorboards with his teeth-gnashing, curmudgeonly Thomas. Pattinson’s taciturn Ephraim withholds a secret that fuels paranoia and madness, sometimes allayed by drunken glee.

I don’t think the homoeroticism, or the misplaced audience laughter it provokes, necessarily hinders the film, but it does compound with other clichés—e.g. Prometheus stealing fire from the gods, and having his liver picked out for it.  Apropos, Eggers concedes that he, like MIDSOMMAR’s Ari Aster, borrowed from every great filmmaker.  That alone isn’t plagiarism.  The difference is that the directors who preceded him crafted complete stories instead of disconnected collages.  And even that’s been done before—Robert Zemeckis’ 1972 student film, THE LIFT.

If THE LIGHTHOUSE works it’s because Dafoe and Pattinson perform beyond all expectation, as there’s nothing else to do with the material but go overboard with it.