The Lighthouse

Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse is the most audacious horror film of the decade — a black-and-white, 1.19:1 aspect ratio, period-dialect psychodrama about two lighthouse keepers going mad on a storm-lashed New England island. Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson deliver dueling performances of such ferocity and commitment that the film feels less like a movie and more like a theatrical cage match. Eggers shoots on orthochromatic black-and-white film stock to replicate 19th-century photography, and the result is visually stunning — every frame looks like a Gustave Doré etching brought to terrifying life. The film is simultaneously a Promethean myth, a workplace comedy, a cosmic horror nightmare, and a study of masculine isolation. Mark Korven's score, built from foghorns and brass, is one of the most oppressive soundscapes in cinema.