A24 has released a second trailer for The Lighthouse a little over a month after the first one arrived to stir up all kinds of curiosity about director Robert Eggers‘ sophomore feature film. The Lighthouse stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as two 19th-century lighthouse keepers with a bad, bad case of cabin fever.
The latest Lighthouse trailer begins with Thomas (Pattinson) inquiring about the last man assigned to help Ephraim (Dafoe) take care of the lighthouse situated on a craggy rock somewhere eternally gloomy. With a turn-of-the-century accent spoken in a tone as jagged as the rocks that surround the lighthouse, Ephraim tells Thomas the last man went mad, believing there was “some enchantment in the light.”
If that’s not enough of a signal to you that things get increasingly unnerving in this Lighthouse trailer, than I don’t know what will. Ephraim is suspicious of Thomas’ origin story, mentioning the danger of secrets (keep a pin in that if and when you watch, folks). Things get peak-weird when Thomas and Ephraim get locked in the worst Dude Where’s My Car-meets-Meisner repetition exercise moment as they continually repeat “What?” as each other in their claustrophobic shared bedroom. That’s ignoring all of the fog, a quick glimpse as what is quite possibly a corpse, and an octopus tentacle slithering overhead as Thomas hides from it.
All in all, Eggers has seemingly managed to up the ante on his use of both atmospheric tension and minimalism to evoke some truly unsettling results. Eggers co-wrote the script with brother Max Eggers. This is also the director’s second film to be released by A24.
The Lighthouse arrives in limited release to Los Angeles and New York theaters on October 18 before a wider release sometime afterward.
