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TIFF Review: ‘The Lighthouse’ is Not For the Faint of Heart

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The Lighthouse

Robert Eggers’ sophomore follow-up to 2015’s The Witch is a gradual descent into madness; a journey not for the faint of heart.

The Lighthouse follows two lighthouse keepers on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s. As their time on the island progresses, their patience wears thin and an obsession develops around the brilliant beacon of the lighthouse.

Visually, the film is stunning. Shot in black and white with a 4:3 ratio, the cinematography grips its subject and holds tight. Entire monologues are held with an unblinking eye, driving the incredible performances from stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe deep through so you can feel their intensity in your bones.

The Lighthouse

via A24

As The Lighthouse progresses, the camera echoes the characters’ slip on sanity by increasingly leaning on dutch angles, putting the audience ill-at-ease. The lighting – as with The Witch – appears to be all done naturally; scenes are awash with natural daylight and shadowed by the light of a single lantern in a dark room. For a film that is built around a growing obsession with a beacon of light, every change in lighting feels emphasized, particularly in the stark black and white coloring.

The imagery found within The Lighthouse is entwined in beautiful tableaux seeping with symbolism. Maritime superstitions and mythology flow throughout the film, washing over the action and crashing into the story like waves, pulling the characters under.

Robert Pattinson digs in with a tortured performance that puts DiCaprio’s in The Revenant to shame. He physically toils scene after scene after scene, exhausting the audience and drumming up immediate empathy for his struggles. Both Pattinson and Dafoe leave it all on the table; they suffer greatly for the sake of the film, and it’s incredible to watch. Their collaborative commitment to constantly one-up each other on the scale of insanity is wildly impressive. 

Dafoe is completely lost in his character, so much so that his strong accent and mumbling dialogue can be difficult to suss out at times. There’s one particularly earth-shattering monologue that reverberates on screen that – thankfully – is spat out with such passion that it’s much clearer than some of his other ramblings. Though it can be challenging to track exactly what he’s saying, he’s always easy to follow thanks to Dafoe’s crystal clear performance. 

When it comes to monologues, The Lighthouse is blessed with some real knockouts. Pattinson and Dafoe rise to the challenge and deliver gripping performances that speak to their raw talent as actors. Eggers knows the level of skill he’s working with and captures their tirades with the utmost respect, allowing them to flex their artistic muscles.

via A24

Surprisingly, The Lighthouse actually has some moments of real humor peppered in. These bits of levity are drawn from the overall absurdity of the film and build on the relationship between our two main (and only) characters — though they’re not exactly jovial. Their constant battle turns from a one-sided verbal thrashing to a hypnotic dance of toxic camaraderie. 

Eggers has proven himself to be one of the most exciting directors working in genre cinema today. The Lighthouse has so much bubbling under the surface, and as the film progresses, it boils over and floods every inch of the screen with unhinged madness. Eggers is extraordinarily talented and we can’t wait to see what he does next.

All that said, The Lighthouse is not for everyone. It’s definitely a slow burn, and it may be a bit too off-kilter for some audiences. But if you approach the film with patience and an open mind, there is a lot to take away. It’s not an easy journey, but it’s one you won’t soon forget.

For more on TIFF 2019, check out our interview with Midnight Madness programmer Peter Kuplowsky and the full 2019 Midnight Madness lineup.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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