Robert Eggers is one of the most critical voices in modern-day horror. His folklores have driven independent cinema enthusiasts to worship him as their lord and savior. His second feature – after the truly terrifying ‘The VVitch’ is about a maddening, straight-shot delirium of substantiated identity cross-overs and power struggles. The Lighthouse script is a thing of beauty on its own. Every single written text brings with it a washing wave of terror.
Peppered with super-dark humor that will only tesselate with the Shakspeare read folks, The Lighthouse screenplay owns its existence to Eggers’s brother Max. Max wrote the script based on Edgar Allan Poe’s infamous unfinished short story, The Lighthouse, but still couldn’t end up giving it proper existence. This is where Robert Eggers stepped in to take a crack at this weirdly terrifying tale of identity.
Also Read: The Lighthouse (2019): ‘MAMI’ Review – Unnerving and Creepy
The Eggers brothers thus went on endless research about lighthouses, seafaring types, and maritime mythology. In the 1980s, England became a study point where they came across the pretty basic and familiar story of two lighthouse keepers stranded during a storm. There were only a few things that the maddening genius of the Robert Eggers wished for, and with A24 helming the film in a black and white with a vintage aspect ratio, the brothers couldn’t ask for more.
There’s no second thought when I say this, but The Lighthouse is all at once terrifying, visceral, and laugh-out-loud funny. The two lighthouse keepers, played by William Defoe and Robert Pattison, descend into perpetual madness as they get excessively drunk. This is, however, the basic narrative structure in this cleverly written, sort-off experimental stand-off of power struggle and identity disarrangement. The first look of the film brought Eggers back into the indie circuit. Some of the sequences written by the two brothers are crackling. The back and forth is especially amazing. The Lighthouse script is packed with punches that all land on hypnotic, surreal grounds.
Download The Lighthouse Script Here
[Via: A24]