Well, this was a dark and twisted experience! It charts the destruction, mental and physical, of two lighthouse keepers stranded on a more than usually remote lighthouse. The soundscape if fascinating, right from the start with an air of the unknown in all that we hear, interspersed with the incessant roar of he surf. the fact that it is shot in B and W adds superbly to the atmosphere and both distances us from the experiences that we \are seeing and hearing and yet, by creating its own very distinct and weird visual world, also sucks us relentlessly into its horrors..
The performances by Dafoe and Pattinson are superb and painfully powerful - at times I felt that they were going to tip over onto grotesque [parody and indeed, if one merely described what one saw, then that would certainly seem to be the case. But somehow this never happened; i was just gripped from the first frame to the last, uncomfortable though that often was.
there were no easy solutions given as to exactly what was happening or why which made it all the more powerful. And this is something that is difficult to bring off. Too 0ften, if a film of this nature is being made, it, finally fails as it does descend into grotesque parody - but not here, amazingly.
A remarkable film.