InfoSearched
Two men, one lighthouse, and a fog horn that never stops screaming.
A24 dropped the second official trailer for Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse on September 9, hammering home the October 18 theatrical date. Shot in a boxy 1.19:1 frame and drained of all color, the footage sells a two-man descent into paranoia that critics have already flagged as one of the year’s strangest, most unshakeable films.
- Willem Dafoe plays veteran keeper Thomas Wake and Robert Pattinson plays his new assistant, Ephraim Winslow, isolated on a storm-battered New England island in the 1890s.
- Robert Eggers directs and co-wrote the script with his brother Max Eggers, following up his 2015 breakout The Witch.
- The film won the FIPRESCI Prize in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in May 2019, ahead of its October 18 wide release from A24.
The Setup
The trailer opens on a rowboat cutting through churning surf toward a jagged rock outcrop, the kind of approach shot that tells you nobody’s leaving this place easily. Wake and Winslow take up their post at the lighthouse, Wake barking orders like a man who’s spent decades alone with only gulls for company, Winslow trying to hold his own as the low man on the totem pole. Eggers stages the labor itself as a threat: hauling oil, scrubbing the tower, shoveling coal, all of it repetitive enough to wear down anyone’s grip on reality.
Dafoe’s Wake is drawn as controlling and cruel almost from the first exchange, dressing down Winslow and treating him less like a colleague than property. Pattinson’s Winslow, meanwhile, is shown flashing through hallucinations that suggest either a buried trauma or a mind already cracking before he ever set foot on the rock. Whether the sea itself is haunted or the men are haunting each other is left deliberately unresolved.
Sound, Light and the Slow Unraveling
What separates this trailer from a standard psychological-thriller reel is the sound design — the foghorn’s low groan runs under nearly every cut, paired with sailor’s superstitions about mermaids and bad omens that Eggers folds into the dialogue. The lighthouse beam itself becomes an object of fixation, something Wake guards obsessively and something Winslow can’t stop staring into, as if the light is doing something to him that neither man will say out loud.
Two wickies. One island. No way off until the boat comes back — if it comes back.
The black-and-white photography, combined with that narrow, almost square aspect ratio, gives the whole trailer a suffocating, archival feel — like found footage from a shipwreck inquiry rather than a modern movie ad. That formal choice lines up with the Cannes reception the film got back in May, where it walked away from the Directors’ Fortnight with the FIPRESCI Prize, a real signal from critics that Eggers had built something more than a genre exercise. Readers tracking the rest of the fall horror and thriller slate can find more of what’s coming in the best upcoming horror movies roundup, and fans of stacked genre trailers this season should also check out the second trailer for The Tomorrow War for comparison on how A24 versus the bigger studios cut their teasers.
Behind the Camera
The Lighthouse was produced by RT Features, New Regency and Parts & Labor, with A24 handling U.S. distribution just as it did on Eggers’ debut. The pairing of Dafoe and Pattinson marks a deliberate swing for both actors toward stripped-down, physically demanding work — no stunts, no franchise scaffolding, just two men, one rock, and a script built to fray nerves in real time.
October 18 is now the date to watch. If the Cannes buzz and this trailer’s reception hold, The Lighthouse is shaping up as the kind of limited-release title that punches well above its box-office numbers come awards-season conversation.
Musicians Who Stormed Off Stage During Live Performances
The Raiders release Antonio Brown | SportsCenter
OBJ-Baker Mayfield will be the best duo in the NFL – Max Kellerman | First Take
The shortest game of Magnus Carlsen’s chess career!
Family Lockdown Boogie