Movie Review: The Lighthouse (Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson)

    My friends have been recommending that I watch The Lighthouse since it came out, and I finally did this past weekend! It’s available on Amazon Prime and only costs $4 to rent, and I’d say it’s very much worth the price. 

    The movie stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe (both wonderful, obviously) and takes place on a lighthouse outpost in New England. Pattinson and Dafoe are lighthouse keepers who slowly and sadly learn that, due to a storm, their replacements aren’t coming - and they’re trapped on the island in the middle of intense waters. It is also exclusively in black and white and written based on an unfinished short story by Edgar Allen Poe. I would say that it is a psychological thriller but at the same time, because of the themes and how the movie is set up, it doesn’t feel like a typical psychological thriller.

    I loved the number of themes that were included in the movie. The cinematography added to this and definitely drew me in, it seems like there’s always something going on that could be interpreted differently. One element was the loss of sanity that both (some more than others) experienced. For Pattinson’s character especially, this grew stronger the longer they were stranded.

    The largest concept throughout the movie is that seabirds are reincarnated people who may have died (on the waters or as a keeper) in connection to the island. I really enjoyed how they carried this through the movie in small features that you may not catch, and in very large displays.

    Overall, if you’re interested in genres like horror, psychological thriller, survival, or anything similar, I would highly recommend watching this movie. It was interesting to see into the mind of Pattinson's character, and towards the end made you wonder what was real and what was made up by his imagination.