Director: Gregory Lamberson
Year: 2020
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural; Psychological
Plot:
Arriving at a supposedly haunted lighthouse, a writer working on investigating the history of the area for a new book, but the longer he and his team of assistants monitoring the situation stay there the more he becomes affected by the ghosts from the lighthouse’s troubled past and must control his sanity to make it out alive.
Review:
On the whole, this was a pretty enjoyable and chilling ghost story. Among it’s more enjoyable aspects is the simplistic setup that gives this quite a natural small-town-haunting setup. Detailing a history of chilling and somewhat true-sounding encounters that have plagued the area for years to signal the curse hanging over the lighthouse by virtue of fine flashbacks of these encounters, there’s a great build-up on display here that uses it’s slow-burn charm to great effect as this early setup work offers the perfect launching point for later on.
With this setup in place, the later scenes carry a far bigger weight with the ghostly encounters being progressively creepier. Not only do the flashbacks to the various incidents plaguing the lighthouse much more chilling as time goes on, but the current-day sequences have plenty to like with the troubled investigations into the claims about its haunted past. As the haunting nature of these scenes shows more of a psychological outcome on his psyche, this offers quite a lot of chilling aspects to the multitude of elements present here, from the time-displacement, eerie voices in the distance and much more on display here, making for a great time.
There are some slight flaws to be had here. One of the main flaws featured here is the cutaways to the past incidents about the tragedies within the area. It’s not truly problematic but it’s more an idea of how long it takes before the practice is spelled out about the scenes being used to describe the events that have taken place in order to haunt the lighthouse as there’s no real clue about them or their intention. Rather, the film simply launches into a movie crew shooting on-location with no real warning and it’s quite jarring with no warning of doing this.
As well, there’s also the slight issue of some questionable scenes here that tend to undo the suspense present. By constantly presenting the spirit as an ethereal figure wandering around in the background unnoticed by the character and only signaled by the egregious musical sting accompanying the moment, the scenes just come off as cliched and not in the slightest bit scary. That this happens often enough to be a real point of contention with its usage is distressing that it needs to rely on such an underhanded and outdated tactic. Neither of these issues really hold this one down that much but just lower it slightly.
Overview: ****/5
Filled with plenty of effective elements with a chilling setup that’s played with quite nicely in its psychological torment and rather impressive haunting sequences, these are far more pertinent to the film than it’s minor flaws which show up but don’t hold this back. This is definitely worth a look for fans of the original novel, followers of the creative crew or those who appreciate slow-burn genre fare while those who don’t follow that type of film should heed caution.
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