You will never look at seagulls the same after watching Robert Eggers' latest film, The Lighthouse, a tale of nautical superstitions and closely guarded secrets set in the late 19th century.
His first film, The Witch, was among other things a feminist film. The Lighthouse, similarly, is a cold-hard stare at toxic masculinity, exploring what happens when two mismatched men are forced to cohabit in a lighthouse, on a rock in the middle of the sea, farting, drinking, masturbating, and beating on seagulls.
It's unsettling at times, yes, but also utterly mesmerising.
As Eggers once quipped "nothing good happens when two men are trapped in a giant phallus." And he's right, but before you dismiss The Lighthouse as some sort of ugly stew of perverted male squalor, think again, because this well-considered journey into the mental abyss has been meticulously crafted by a director at the top of his game.
At its centre is Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe), a salty-sea-dog-turned-lighthouse-keeper and his new assistant, the quiet and guarded Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson), who have four weeks to go about their duties on the weatherbeaten island before relief arrives.
