6 Things To Watch After The Lighthouse

A stranded young buck loses his mind in the companionship of a bedraggled maniac. Sound familiar?

This underrated Australian classic bears many similarities to The Lighthouse. Wake in Fright was for a time regarded as one of cinema's lost greats. Its master negative had gone missing but was thankfully recovered in 2004 by editor Anthony Buckley. It was re-released at Cannes in 2009 to critical acclaim and subsequently made available on DVD and Blu-ray. The interesting background of the movie out of the way, let's move on to the plot and similarities.

A young English schoolteacher named John has a post in a remote Australian town due to a government bond he's tied to. He wants to go to Sydney for the Christmas holidays but has to stop in mining town Bundanyabba – known locally as "The Yabba" – in order to catch a flight. He befriends the locals during his night there and, like Young, is convinced to have a few drinks. Before long, he's behaving exactly like the people he looked down upon.

A film that asks would boredom drive a person to drink, it seems to answer 'yes and worse'.