‘The Lighthouse’ Trailer: The Devil Transcends Space And Time

‘The Lighthouse’ had stirred a commotion with its posters a few months ago, and the trailer only intensifies that effect.

Robert Eggers created waves among the art-house audiences, back in 2015, with his debut feature ‘The Witch. The movie baffled critics, as it was solidly written and visualized for a debutant, and haunted viewers with its bleak gothicisation of a period drama, something you’d expect from Mary Shelley.

Four years later, Eggers is back with two of the finest craftsmen in contemporary indie cinema, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. ‘The Lighthouse’ had stirred a commotion with its posters a few months ago, and the trailer only intensifies that effect. The internet is buzzing, raving about the movie’s striking resemblance to pre-Technicolor horror films, and its crude humorous style.

Similar to The Lighthouse Trailer: The Lighthouse First Look

The Lighthouse’s black-and-white look is undeniably stunning and is reminiscent of ‘The Turin Horse’, ‘A Field in England’ and ‘White Ribbon’, with a highly contrasting use of the monochrome. The trailer hints at a minimalist setting, that creates a rendezvous with insanity for the characters, a theme that reminds me of Bergman’s ‘Hour of the Wolf’. To lend realism to the grueling nature of the setting, Eggers decided to shoot on-site, on a volcanic rock, which according to Pattinson was the most difficult shoot in his career.

Eggers said, “We built a 70-foot working lighthouse that could shine for 16 miles…Forchu was a very unforgiving place. There are no trees and the wind is relentless. The wind could be blowing so loud that I couldn’t hear Willem and Rob if I was standing inches away from them, and, I think we wouldn’t have had the believability of the atmosphere and the environment of the storm if we weren’t actually shooting in it. There are many scenes where you might think we have wind machines and rain machines and we don’t. I mean we used them, too, but oftentimes the craziest dramatic moments were photographed for real.”

The trailer booms with a heavy synthesized score, a renowned trait of the horror genre, and features lighting that reflects influence from Universal Era horror and Charles Laughton’s ‘The Night of the Hunter’. The crude absurdist style seems to borrow elements from Hammer films, with Eggers’s own distinct ambience, that set his debut feature apart from the contemporaries. ‘The Lighthouse’ is scheduled to be released in October, and has already incited rave reviews from critics, with special focus on Eggers’s technical achievements.

The Lighthouse Trailer:

The Lighthouse Links: IMDb, Wikipedia