The Lighthouse

Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse is a black-and-white period horror that traps two men on a remote New England island in the 1890s. The film follows Thomas Howard (Robert Pattinson), a quiet former lumberjack who arrives for a four-week stint as assistant wickie, and Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe), a garrulous, superstitious old keeper who hoards the lantern room for himself. Their daily grind of coal shoveling, floor scrubbing, and grog-fueled evenings slowly curdles into something far stranger.

Eggers co-wrote the script with his brother Max, drawing on an unfinished Edgar Allan Poe story and the real-life 1801 Smalls Lighthouse Incident, where two keepers went mad and one died. Shot on vintage 35mm film with 1920s-era lenses, the movie uses a nearly square 1.19:1 aspect ratio that amplifies the claustrophobia. The dialogue is thick with period-accurate nautical slang, researched from 19th-century sailor diaries. Mark Korven's score, built around the custom-built Apprehension Engine, grinds and creaks like the lighthouse itself.

Released by A24 in October 2019, the film grossed $18.3 million worldwide on an $11 million budget. It earned Jarin Blaschke an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography and won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes. Both Pattinson and Dafoe received career-best notices, with Dafoe taking the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead. The movie quickly became a cult touchstone, spawning memes around Dafoe's lobster monologue and cementing Eggers' reputation as a master of elevated horror. [edit]

The year is 1890. A young man named Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) steps off a supply boat onto a jagged, windswept island off the coast of New England. He's there to serve a four-week term as assistant wickie to the veteran lighthouse keeper Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe). Wake is a grizzled, flatulent old mariner who speaks in archaic, lyrical outbursts and believes seagulls carry the souls of drowned sailors. He sets the rules immediately: he alone will tend the lantern room at the top of the lighthouse, while Winslow handles every menial chore, shoveling coal, hauling oil buckets, scrubbing the floors, and painting the exterior.

The two men couldn't be more different. Wake loves to talk, spinning long-winded tales of his seafaring days while they share meals of boiled lobster and fish. Winslow keeps to himself, brooding over a dark secret: he isn't who he says he is. His real name is Thomas Howard, and he killed the actual Ephraim Winslow, his former foreman at a lumber camp, before stealing his identity and taking this job. That buried guilt surfaces in nightmares where he drowns a man in a river.

Days blur into a monotonous rhythm of work and drink. Wake forces Winslow to down his homemade grog every evening, a potent concoction that fuels his paranoia. Strange details accumulate. Winslow finds a small mermaid figurine tucked under his mattress, left by the previous assistant. He starts seeing a real mermaid (Valeriia Karaman) in the waves, her pale body and dark hair beckoning him from the surf. He also notices a seagull that seems to stare at him with unnatural intelligence, and Wake warns him never to harm the birds, they carry the souls of dead sailors.

Wake's constant berating and refusal to let Winslow ascend to the light breed resentment. Winslow sneaks looks at Wake's logbook and finds scathing entries criticizing his work and recommending he be fired without pay. The tension spikes when a massive storm rolls in, cutting them off from the mainland weeks past their scheduled relief date. Supplies dwindle. The grog runs out. Wake forces Winslow to drink a foul mixture of turpentine and honey, claiming it's medicine. A giant wave crashes through the cottage, flooding their living quarters.

As the storm rages outside, the two men descend into a cycle of drunkenness, accusations, and violence. Winslow confronts Wake about the secrets of the light. Wake taunts him with cryptic warnings: the light holds a terrible truth, and those who seek it are cursed. Winslow's hallucinations intensify, he sees the mermaid in the lighthouse, hears whispers, and imagines the real Ephraim Winslow's face in the waves. The line between reality and madness blurs completely. The two men fight, Wake taunting Winslow with his false identity, and Winslow finally snaps, beating Wake unconscious and dragging him to a pit near the lighthouse to bury him alive.[edit]