Raindrops on Roses (Part Twenty-Six): The Lighthouse

(trailer)

If you remember, this is something I wanted to do a year ago, alternating between comparing both the old and new Suspiria movies and comparing Robert Eggers’ previous work, The Witch (or The VVitch) with his then-upcoming film The Lighthouse. I managed those first three, but my schedule didn’t line up for the last, most recent movie and I defaulted to another horror film. But it’s been a year now, and I’ve seen the light… house and now is the time to talk about it.

What a strange movie.

I don’t mean like “strange” in a bad way, of course. If I did, I’d have attached it to a different blog series. Plus, most of the choices it makes are conventional. It’s filmed in black-and-white and with a 1.19:1 aspect ratio, which is outdated but not unheard of in modern times. It has a minimalist cast of three but one can easily conceive of that working. What I find most interesting, though, is how it deals with building up and releasing tension.

If you’ve seen The VVitch (or most any horror movie; I’m using this one to compare the same director) this might be something you already understand on an intuitive level. This movie works towards increasing the audience’s awareness that something scary might happen before giving them the catharsis of actually being scary, whether that’s a brief moment of action a la a jump scare or delivering on narrative payoffs. One can find a similar structure in comedy movies, which is why horror-comedies like Shaun of the Dead can exist and be popular.

This is not true of all movies in either of these genres. For example, It Comes At Night barely releases any tension for most of the movie, which is probably why it is so divisive. And the reason I want to talk about The Lighthouse is because it does the same thing horror-comedies do, building up scary tension to a comedic release. But I wouldn’t call it a horror-comedy. Now, to be fair, the line is blurry, but also the comedic aspects of The Lighthouse are more used to draw even more tension for the scarier moments.

A lot of this is in the framing. The movie is about two lighthouse keepers who, isolated from the rest of the world for months on end, go insane, and it’s this insanity that leads to the funny moments. But that means that each comedy beat in the movie only serves to amplify further tense moments. Sure, the moment was dissolved now, but what does that mean about the next moment? Or the next after that?

Is it better than The VVitch? That’s a difficult question. They’re so different from each other, only really connected by having a small cast, an isolated situation, and a folk tale atmosphere. It isn’t like the two Suspiria movies where, you know, one’s technically a remake of the other (and even then I think I declined to answer). I will say, though, I am excited to see whatever movie comes next.

-F