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THE LIGHTHOUSE
Presented by: Film i Malmö membership required
June 1, 2026
Monday, 19:00
Director: Robert Eggers
Year: 2019
Runtime: 109 minutes
Waves crash, birds scream, and rain pounds. Robert Eggers’ “The Lighthouse” wants to drive you a little mad. It’s not just a film about two people on the edge of sanity, it uses sound design and filmmaking tools to push you there too. It has the feel of watching someone else’s nightmare, and it’s not one that’s going to end well. While it’s ultimately a bit too self-conscious to provoke the existential dread and true terror of the best films like it, it’s still an impressive accomplishment thanks to Eggers’ fearlessness and a pair of completely committed performances.
Life is bleak for Thomas and Ephraim from the first gloomy frame of “The Lighthouse.” And I mean gloomy. This is a movie that will be listed as “black and white” but would more accurately be called “gray.” There are few distinct blacks or whites in a film that looks like an overcast evening even during the day. It opens with the two men, played by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, arriving to work a shift at a lighthouse on the edge of the world. Thomas, played by Dafoe, is the older one and the boss of the operation. He orders around Pattinson’s Ephraim, making sure he takes care of all of the daily duties like cleaning and repairing but always reminding him who’s in charge. Thomas refers to Ephraim in diminutive terms like “lad” and orders him around when he’s not telling a long-winded story, or farting.
(Brian Tallerico, Roger-Ebert.com)