10 Best Slow-Burning Psychological Horror Movies
2. The Lighthouse
If you've ever wondered what that episode of SpongeBob SquarePants where SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs think they've killed the health inspector would be like as a horror movie, this one is for you.
In The Lighthouse, two lighthouse keepers, Robert Pattinson and William Dafoe, sink deeper and deeper into insanity after a massive storm strands them on their own personal private hell.
The movie clocks in around an hour-and-forty minutes, and not one moment of that time will you feel at ease. In the same way that Climax tried to capture what it is like to go completely mad, The Lighthouse does much of the same, but by taking a totally different approach.
There are no easy answers in the movie. Is there something supernatural going on? Are they going insane? What did that seagull do to ever deserve such a beating? It's questions such as these that the film takes its sweet time to ask, only to leave you drench in a pool of ambiguity with no answer. Its black and white cinematography and that gosh darn foghorn only serve to enhance the already profound feeling of foreboding present at every moment.