The Witch
Writer: Robert Eggers
Release Date: 11th March 2016 (UK)
Hot Rating: 💥💥💥💥
The brilliant perversity of Robert Eggers' debut film, The Witch, manifests through its setting, that is, a remote farm on the outskirts of New England. The subject of the film, a Puritan family who are banished from their previous home, occupy their newfound space with equal parts intimacy and unsurity. The father, William (Ralph Ineson) attempts to plant crops and go on hunts in the nearby forest, yet these activities are futile and the family are instead plagued by increasingly disturbing incidents. Eggers refrains from using jump scares in favour of a more cerebral filmmaking style; the violence enacted on the family, in turn, creates their hostility to one another. Venomous dialogue and physical relationships are the bread-and-butter of the families descent into hatred. Everything is deployed with a superb reactionary quality that, like the supernatural forces that are at play, slowly infects the film before reaching its unsettling conclusion.
The Lighthouse
Writers: Robert Eggers and Max Eggers
Release Date: 31st January 2020
Hot Rating: 💥💥💥💥
In his second feature, The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers maintains a drawn-out sense of dread, yet supplements the pensive horrors of The Witch with hallucinatory imagery and absurdist comedy. A seemingly 'simple' two-hander about two lighthouse keepers–Winslow (Robert Pattinson) and Thomas (Willem Dafoe)–explores the perversities of human nature through elaborate set design and creative formal choices. From the cabin that the men live in, complete with rickety roof tiles and old floorboards, to the lighthouse itself, a primitive phallus that is emblematic of Thomas' obsessive behaviour, Eggers priorities lie in the atmosphere. The experiential nature of The Lighthouse is as fundamental to its brilliance as it is detrimental to its narrative. The crude dialogue risked undermining the film's terror had these words not been delivered with such rigour by its two leads. Dafoe and Pattinson, in their bond and brutality toward one another, are the shining beacon in this structure.
Writer: Robert Eggers
Release Date: 11th March 2016 (UK)
Hot Rating: 💥💥💥💥
The brilliant perversity of Robert Eggers' debut film, The Witch, manifests through its setting, that is, a remote farm on the outskirts of New England. The subject of the film, a Puritan family who are banished from their previous home, occupy their newfound space with equal parts intimacy and unsurity. The father, William (Ralph Ineson) attempts to plant crops and go on hunts in the nearby forest, yet these activities are futile and the family are instead plagued by increasingly disturbing incidents. Eggers refrains from using jump scares in favour of a more cerebral filmmaking style; the violence enacted on the family, in turn, creates their hostility to one another. Venomous dialogue and physical relationships are the bread-and-butter of the families descent into hatred. Everything is deployed with a superb reactionary quality that, like the supernatural forces that are at play, slowly infects the film before reaching its unsettling conclusion.
 |
| Image: YouTube |
The Lighthouse
Writers: Robert Eggers and Max Eggers
Release Date: 31st January 2020
Hot Rating: 💥💥💥💥
In his second feature, The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers maintains a drawn-out sense of dread, yet supplements the pensive horrors of The Witch with hallucinatory imagery and absurdist comedy. A seemingly 'simple' two-hander about two lighthouse keepers–Winslow (Robert Pattinson) and Thomas (Willem Dafoe)–explores the perversities of human nature through elaborate set design and creative formal choices. From the cabin that the men live in, complete with rickety roof tiles and old floorboards, to the lighthouse itself, a primitive phallus that is emblematic of Thomas' obsessive behaviour, Eggers priorities lie in the atmosphere. The experiential nature of The Lighthouse is as fundamental to its brilliance as it is detrimental to its narrative. The crude dialogue risked undermining the film's terror had these words not been delivered with such rigour by its two leads. Dafoe and Pattinson, in their bond and brutality toward one another, are the shining beacon in this structure.
 |
| Image: YouTube |
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