Descend into mad­ness with the first trail­er for The Lighthouse

Back in May at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, the LWLies team was col­lec­tive­ly wowed by The Witch direc­tor Robert Eggers‘ hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry fol­low-up fea­ture The Light­house. It’s been a fun few months of dan­gling our knowl­edge over the col­leagues that didn’t make it to the Croisette, but now the film’s first trail­er has arrived to give every­one a look into the eye of the storm.

Eggers sets his scene on a remote island off the coast of Maine, some­time in the 1890s. Its only inhab­i­tants? Two sea­men (Willem Dafoe and Robert Pat­tin­son) respon­si­ble for the light­house warn­ing oncom­ing sailors of land, and gen­er­al upkeep around the shack in which they lay their heads.

A hand­ful of styl­is­tic choic­es – shoot­ing in high-con­trast black-and-white, the use of old lens­es for a worn look, a boxy aspect ratio – sug­gest a thin sheen of sur­re­al­i­ty that grad­u­al­ly comes to blan­ket both men as time slips away from them. Dafoe and Pattinson’s char­ac­ters get a case of cab­in fever dri­ving both men to the precipice of their san­i­ty, with pound­ing rain and malev­o­lent seag­ulls con­spir­ing to push them over.

The trail­er whips up a hur­ri­cane of gnarled nau­ti­cal imagery: Pat­tin­son ten­der­ly touch­ing a mer­maid fig­urine, a writhing mass of suc­tion-cupped ten­ta­cles, a ship emerg­ing from fog as if it was a ghost­ly appari­tion. Between the haunt­ing sea chantey carous­ing in the back­ground and the swirl of oneir­ic visions, there’s a pal­pa­ble mad­ness in the air.

One tip from us, for the inter­im months of prepa­ra­tion before the film debuts in Octo­ber. Do a bit of research on Jean Grémillon’s 1929 silent film The Light­house Keep­ers, an influ­ence on Eggers appar­ent from a sin­gle glance at the ear­li­er pic­ture.

The Light­house comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 19 October.