this movie will be divisive. Your enjoyment level will be based on what you were hoping to get out of the movie. If you're all in for just the mindfuck of it all, you're gonna love it. If you were hoping for an actual story & perhaps some character arcs, you will leave disappointed like I did. I'm glad I went to see it, but it was not what I was looking for. Def. a step down after Eggers' last movie The VVitch.
Pattinson & Dafoe are ALL IN though. Their performances are impressive. The movie looks really cool too, shot in B&W and also in a somewhat extreme 4:3 ratio, almost looking square. Adds to the claustrophobia being conveyed at times, as well as the period setting (a lighthouse off the coast of New England somewhere in 1890). Their accents & vocab are extremely of the period (like The VVitch) so subtitles would have helped me out. The movie is hard enough to follow (purposefully), it took me out of things that much more when I couldnt make out what they were saying.
So yeah...things just get weirder and weirder throughout and you can never be sure whats real and what isn't. That's fine, but when you add the repetition of certain interactions & scenes & the fact that imo the movie doesn't go anywhere (or at least not anywhere "larger" like I was assuming would happen eventually), it got really annoying for me. With all the repetition, they should have cut 20 or so minutes off this thing & I prolly would have enjoyed it alot more. It honestly felt padded...like let's just add more weird shit here and odd, quickly cut images there just for the hell of it.