Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

The Lighthouse

For once, I’m not issuing a rating of a film within my short review of it. The Lighthouse is one of those films that defies easy and initial review. One can look at it analytically and find a lot of great features, but then the plot throws everything out of sync and makes you wonder not only what you saw, but whether or not it was any good.

Let’s start with the good. Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography is crisp and haunting. The use of light and shadow plays well into the film’s concept and returning to a very old aspect ratio puts us squarely in the past even if it limits the amount of space the director has to work with, though I’m sure that was his own decision. Craig Lathrop’s production design is also terrific, creating a place and setting of creepy realism. The performances of stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are mesmerizing, taking the audience from veiled hostility to crazed conflict over the course of the film. We knew Dafoe had that kind of power, but Pattinson keeps trying to prove he’s more than the vampire kid and if this doesn’t put that notion to bed, then he will never outlive that reputation.

Then there’s the bad. Eggars, along with his brother Max, have crafted a screenplay that defies explanation. As a thought exercise, that’s exciting, but from a cinematic experience it’s utterly aggravating. Trying to understand a film and its nuances along with hits emotional and philosophical stances can be challenging, but it shouldn’t defy understanding entirely. The pacing is slow at times and doesn’t entirely make sense. While there are elements of the film that suggest this is a chance for both character to explore their past indelicacies, those flaws don’t evoke themselves terribly well. Perhaps guilt has a major impact on the proceedings, but is there some other premise at work here. Could the two be trapped in purgatory, ferried to the island of the damned, unable to leave and slowly driven mad by their fallibility? The closing scene would support that concept, looking like a painting from a Renaissance master. There are questions still to be answered, and over time, I may better understand them, but it’s this confusion combined with the frequent tedium of the film itself that inhibits my ability to reach an immediate and informed conclusion, even four days after seeing the film itself.