Watch Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe Fight an Octopus in ‘The Lighthouse’ Trailer
It’s a nautical nightmare.
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The Lighthouse is a new movie from Robert Eggers, who made the instant 2015 horror classic The Witch. It looks like both stories have a lot in common, too, based on this intensely weird, creepy trailer for Lighthouse, which stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson.
Broadly speaking, The Witch was about people in isolation with warped imaginations and how the supernatural and psychological overlap until insanity and paranormal terror are impossible to tell apart. The Lighthouse takes that dynamic and pares it down to just two men, one young and one old, and puts them on a nameless, rocky island where they dance, face evil seagulls, and Pattinson’s character deals with what looks like an octopus attack.
Both Dafoe’s and Pattinson’s characters clearly have secrets and the gray isolation (yes, the movie is shot in black and white) must be a part of it. It’s Pattinson who seems more secretive, as you can hear Dafoe repeating “Why’d ya spill yer beans?” over and over throughout the trailer, as if berating him for finally telling the truth.
Correspondents for The Vulture saw the movie at Cannes and commentary from their report on that promises one hell of a ride:
Pattinson’s entire performance is absolutely wild. It reminds me of Jack Nicholson in The Shining — ax wielding included! Pattinson starts the movie out quiet, stoic, in his classic Mysterious Mode, dutifully hurling buckets of shit into the ocean, scrubbing the floors, and pushing wheelbarrows full of coal across precarious rocks.
But slowly, he starts to turn. He begins chugging liquor directly from the bottle on the job. He masturbates with increasing fury, eventually ending up half-naked on the shanty floor, sobbing. Time loses meaning; he punches his fist through a clock. Chunks of vomit litter his once-debonair moustache. During one particularly drunken evening, he screams at Dafoe about how badly he wants meat. “If I had a steak right now,” he yells, “I would fuck it!” (…)
We don’t even need a proper synopsis after that. This is one of those you just go see for the WTF factor.
The Lighthouse will hit theaters just in time for Halloween on October 18, 2019.