Entertainment professional and film aficionado Gary DeWaard shares insight into production studio news with online readers and details of movies-in-the-works. Here, he helps readers understand the hype around A24’s wide release of Robert Eggers’ film The Lighthouse later this fall.
“Few independent film production studios have made as much noise in the last few years as A24 has, and they’ve gained a reputation for being a horror movie powerhouse,” says Gary DeWaard.
While A24 isn’t strictly a horror movie studio––they’re the producers behind award-winning Lady Bird from 2017––they have contributed over a dozen buzz-worthy films to the horror industry since 2016 alone.
Next up on their list of genre-bending horror features is Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe.
“Robert Eggers is fairly new to Hollywood, he’s only made one other feature film,” says Gary DeWaard. “However, his first movie The Witch is still one of the most talked about horror films of the decade.”
In The Witch, Robert Eggers painted a bleak picture of family life in New England during the 17th century. The film is grounded in harsh realism and a lingering sense of dread as an isolated family encounters a tribe of witches deep in their woods. While serving as a respected period piece, Eggers’ film was most praised for its true-to-life portrait of an unraveling family facing the elements and its depiction of old-world evil.
His second movie, The Lighthouse, is set to release this October and takes a far departure from the stylings and choices Eggers made in The Witch.
“Everything is different in The Lighthouse,” says Gary DeWaard. “The movie is shot entirely in black-and-white film, giving a whole new feel to the approach on horror. The camera angles are different, the lenses are different, and the Lovecraftian themes running through it are starkly different from the creepiness and mythology of Colonial New England.”
In The Lighthouse, a pair of lighthouse keepers weather harsh storms atop their rocky perch overlooking the ocean. Over the course of the film, each of the men are faced with solitude and the loss of sanity, and they’re threatened by dark and mysterious forces surrounding the lighthouse.
It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2019 where it received critical acclaim. Eggers was highly praised for his direction and his choice of technical aspects as were Dafoe and Pattinson for their performances.
“With as much talk surrounding the follow up to The Witch, this isn’t going to be one of those films that slides under the radar,” says Gary DeWaard. “Without anyone seeing it, the film is already expected to shake up the horror industry and possibly nab a few awards when the season rolls around.”
A24 has scheduled to release The Lighthouse on October 18th.
