10 Most Disturbing Psychological Film Thrillers
4. The Lighthouse
One of the most bizarre films with mainstream ambitions of recent years, The Lighthouse is a baffling, creepy nightmare of a movie that deftly combines laughs with mind boggling horror and an overwhelming sense of tension made all the more effective by the genuine unpredictability of Robert Eggers’ vision.
Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson play two lighthouse keepers on a remote rock. Dafoe’s senior mistreats Pattinson’s mysterious junior, and while the two briefly bond over a shared love of moonshine, when they become stranded at their post, paranoia quickly seeps in as the men grow distrustful of one another.
Pattinson and Dafoe are on career best form here, spinning the wild comedy in with the wild jolts of horror and an undercurrent of potential violence. There’s so much mystery at the heart of a film that is built on vibe and energy more than plot.
When things go wrong in The Lighthouse they go wildly wrong, and the final third where tensions really come to a head is some of the most explosive and invested movie making you’ll ever see. The Lighthouse is a tough one to place in a genre, but it’s certainly a psychological picture - a real trip.