Robert Eggers
Both beautiful and brutal, Robert Eggers’ The Northman is a saga worth seeing.
From acclaimed director Robert Eggers, The Northman is an epic revenge thriller that explores how far a Viking prince will go to seek justice.
Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse is an abstract and surreal thriller which finds its grounding in its discussion of labor.
If you’re willing to take a chance and join Eggers, Pattinson, and Dafoe on their very weird journey, you’ll find it’s worth the trip.
The Lighthouse tells the story of two lighthouse keepers on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.
Introducing the new Film Inquiry YouTube video series Decipher, with Laura Birnbaum, where we will be using history, literature, art, and film to translate the hidden meanings within the films we love.
Set in 1630, Robert Eggers’ The Witch follows a family banished from a Puritan community and forced to live, isolated and penniless, in a remote woodlands shack. Soon, malevolent forces begin to molest the kids and infect the goat, and the family is engulfed in a maelstrom of religious hysteria and occultist magic. With its deeply unsettling atmosphere and frenzied performances, The Witch has (not undeservedly) become one of the most acclaimed horror films of the new millennium, with many critics praising its attention to detail and the slow-burning tension of its narrative (as well as its mascot:
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Robert Eggers’ The Witch is its unwillingness to pander to its audience. Though people may have been expecting a semi-typical supernatural horror film (complete with jumpscares and excessive gore), what they receive instead is something much more disturbing in its implications. Set in Puritan era New England, The Witch is an atmospherically driven, religion-coated film that is, at times, both beautiful and terrifying.
Horror is a very particular thing. What brand you prefer says something very intimate about you, about what you value enough to fear losing. The horror I respond to normally involves family and religion and the slow dissolution of the ties that bind people together.