Robert Eggers makes a cramped, foul-tempered horror film with an excellent, frequently funny pair of performances. Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe keep it compelling even when the quarrelling begins to repeat itself.
Robert Eggers gets a fine, disagreeable horror film out of two lighthouse keepers who cannot leave each other alone. The Lighthouse is worth the confinement, with a warning that its repeated confrontations eventually become tiring. The isolation gives every insult time to fester and every assertion of authority far too much importance. There is something recognisable in the difficulty of working alongside somebody determined to get under the skin.
Willem Dafoe’s Thomas Wake is a bully whose enthusiasm for his own voice would make a short shift feel long. The elaborate period dialogue, written by Robert Eggers, gives him plenty to enjoy, and he makes the old keeper’s authority both threatening and faintly ridiculous. We laughed at the relish with which he turns a quarrel into a performance. The comedy comes from the disproportion between two men stuck together and the grandeur with which one of them insists on speaking.
Robert Pattinson has the harder task: keeping the younger man’s resentment legible against that much theatrical force. His discomfort gives the bullying somewhere to land, and his growing willingness to compete keeps the pairing from settling into a simple routine. Neither actor treats the crude humour as a break from the unpleasantness. The jokes make the proximity worse, because these men cannot even be disgusting in private.
Jarin Blaschke’s black-and-white cinematography gives the faces a harshness that makes even a quiet exchange uneasy. The near-square frame leaves little space beside the men; putting two bodies into it can feel like the start of an argument. Craig Lathrop’s production design keeps the cramped setting believable, with period detail that never feels like an invitation to admire the furnishings. We believe in the unpleasant business of living there, which matters when the imagery becomes harder to take literally.
Louise Ford’s editing gives the verbal contests enough room for a change of tone to become uncomfortable. A scene can remain funny after it has also become threatening, and cutting away too briskly would spoil that. Mark Korven’s score adds to the heavy, abrasive soundscape, making the confinement feel more oppressive. At times the combined noise presses harder than it needs to; the performances have already made the danger clear.
The difficulty is finding somewhere for all this pressure to go. Once the pattern of provocation and retaliation is established, further rounds do not always tell us much more about either man. The director keeps adding strangeness, but some of the later excess feels laboured, and the 109 minutes could be leaner. Ambiguity suits this sort of horror; a literal explanation would scarcely improve it. What we wanted was a little more variation in the encounters, rather than another increase in intensity.
Yet the humour gives the film something that solemn exercises in isolation often lack. These men can be petty, embarrassing and absurd without becoming safe to be around, and the actors preserve that uncertainty when the story starts to circle. There is enough pleasure in watching them compete to justify the repetitive stretches. Give it an evening when a quarrel will not spoil the mood.
