Robert Eggers’s feature debut for A24, The Witch, was one of the scariest movies of 2016. The slow-burning horror film was a master class in tone and subdued dread, like Ingmar Bergman decided to direct the world’s most messed up adaptation of The Crucible, with a demonic goat and some evil crows thrown in for good measure.
On Tuesday, A24 dropped the first trailer for Eggers’s upcoming second film, The Lighthouse, a creepy, black-and-white period piece about two lighthouse keepers played by Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. It looks like Eggers is still into sneaking evil animals into his movies; this time, though, it’s an octopus. And Pattinson punches the thing while it, uh, tries to wring his neck or something!
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Of course, The Lighthouse isn’t just about one man’s great struggle against a tentacled sea creature, Junes Verne-style. From the look of the trailer, the thing is more of a psychological thriller about two strangers in isolation together. The Lighthouse premiered at Cannes back in May to massive praise, with reviewers calling Pattinson and Dafoe’s performances “phenomenal” and naming Eggers “one of the most exciting directors working today.“
The Lighthouse is due out in theaters October 18. Until then, watch a mustachioed Robert Pattinson fully lose his mind in the trailer above.
