Saw The Lighthouse, a striking black and white film from the same guy who directed The Witch. As with that film, this one is a supernaturally-tinged psycho-horror about two lighthouse keepers slowly driving each other mad. In one corner is a quiet but stern Robert Pattinson and in the other corner is hoary sea-dog Willem Defoe. It's quite the film!
I generally like psychodramas however this one didn't thrill me the way they often do. It's very glum and serious and keeps us the audience in the dark right up unto the ambiguous ending. Several times we are shown dreams and visions which may be real. It's left to us to puzzle and guess at what really happened; how much magic we're willing to indulge in. The result is frustrating, tantalizing. I enjoyed the ambiguity, but I also wish I understood more of the characters' insanity or powers. I wish I knew what was "really" going on.
The central horror of the film in this case is the madness of isolation. The two men's pasts and their power struggles curdle into mythic fantasies and mad cavorting as they try to stave off madness that roars like the sea storm, right outside their door.
There's a lot going on in this film. It's drawing a lot from old sea stories of the 1800s, so we get the didactic moralizing, gods and monsters, sublimated homoeroticism. It all spirals more and more out of hand until frankly murder-suicide begins to seem like a pretty reasonable option. Kudos all around!
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