The Lighthouse (2019)

Starring: Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe
Grade: A-

A lot can be said about The Lighthouse, but there is one simple math equation that it can boiled down to.

Alcohol + Tobacco + Coffee – Water = Lunacy

If there was ever a PSA to drink more water, this film is it.

Summary

In the late 1800s, lighthouse keeper or “wickie” Ephraim Winslow (Pattinson) travels to an isolated island off the coast of New England to work at the lighthouse under former sailor Thomas Wake (Dafoe). Shortly after getting to the cottage that he will be staying in with Wake, the two go their separate ways for a bit. Winslow takes his own tour of the house. Upon getting upstairs, Wake is pissing in a chamber pot in the bedroom and finishes once Winslow sits on his bed. Next, Wake puts the pot under his bed and exits the room. Winslow fumbles with the mattress for a bit once he sees a hole. Digging inside of it, he pulls out a small ivory figurine of a mermaid. He puts it in his jacket. Later, he goes to work and shovels coal into a furnace. That night, he has a quiet dinner with Wake, who pours two drinks and does a toast to celebrate the beginning of Winslow’s four-week stint on the rock. Winslow declines the drink, but Wake insists since it’s bad luck to leave a toast unfinished. Winslow brings up how it’s against regulations according to the manual he read. When Wake argues that he’s supposed to listen to his superior as well, Winslow defiantly dumps the drink in the sink and pours water into his cup instead. They toast, but Winslow spits the water out, with a laughing Wake explaining that the cistern needs to be looked at as well, as it’s one of Winslow’s duties. Wake changes his tune to a more serious one before naming off other duties Winslow is to perform while he’s there like cleaning his quarters every day and working through the dog watch once the fog clears. When Winslow mentions getting to see the lantern, Wake cuts him off and says that only he is the one to tend to the light. The alternating shifts between them are regulation, but Wake argues that the “mid watch that’s to dread” and how he runs things.

He says straight-up, “The light is mine”.

Sometime after, Winslow is shoveling again, and the noises of the machinery start to agitate him. At the same time, Wake stares directly into the light of the lighthouse. Next, Wake is seen with his shirt off and is almost toasting with the light saying, “To ye, me beauty”. In a dream, Winslow walks out to the ocean shore that night and into the water once he sees remnants of a body. Once he goes under, he sees a mermaid making a screeching noise until he wakes up in the morning to Wake entering the room. Right away, he brings up more chores for Winslow to do like working on the cistern, the shingles, and giving the lamp some oil. Then, he goes to bed, which starts Winslow’s morning shift. With this, Winslow does as he’s told. Oddly enough, when he works on the shingles, he looks through a hole he’s made and sees the body of (presumably) Wake as he sleeps in his long underwear. Of course, his butt flap is open for whatever reason. Next, a seagull stops Winslow in his tracks when he tries moving some coal in a wheelbarrow. It will not get out of his way at first, so it forces him to throw a piece of coal at the bird until it flies away. Following this, he drags a kerosene tank up the stairs of the lighthouse. When he gets to the top and attempts to go up the final ladder to reach the light, Wake comes out of nowhere and says he can’t. Then, he gives him a small pot of oil and tells Winslow to take the tank back down unless he’s planning on burning the place. He also adds that Winslow is behind on his duties. That night, the two have dinner again and Wake pours another toast for them. This time around, Winslow takes a sip.

Wake tries to converse with him, but Winslow is quiet. Even so, Wake goes on a rant about a previous girl, how boredom can turn men into villains, and how the only medicine they have is alcohol because it keeps the sailors happy, agreeable, and calm. When Winslow interrupts and adds the word “stupid” to his list, Wake laughs it off and Winslow eases up a little bit. Next, Winslow asks what made Wake’s last keeper leave, but he apparently died. Wake says he went mad and ranted about “sirens, merfolk, bad omens, and the like”. He also believed there was some “enchantment” in the light of the lighthouse and argued that St. Elmo cast his very fire into it. Changing the subject, Wake brings up how he saw Winslow’s little spat with the seagull and says it’s best to leave it be next time because it’s bad luck to kill a sea bird. When Winslow passes this off as another tall tale like the lighthouse stuff, Wake slaps him. Winslow stands up at him, but Wake looks freaked out by his own actions and asks him to make some coffee since they have a long night ahead of them. While in bed, Winslow tries to read, but he gets upright once a seagull flies to the windowsill and taps its beak on the window before flying away. After masturbating to the mermaid statue, Winslow goes outside at night and sees Wake hanging by the light of the lighthouse. The next morning during his shift, Winslow is stopped by Wake for neglecting his duty of cleaning the floor of the bedroom. Apparently, it was nowhere near good enough for Wake’s liking, and he berates Winslow and threatens to dock his wages if he contradicts him again. As Winslow cleans stuff, Wake watches over his shoulder to make sure he does it right.

The rain sets in during work hours and Winslow struggles with his wheelbarrow, dropping it at one point. That night, the two have dinner again and Winslow’s boiling rage is noticeable as he stares at his food.

The next day, Wake is holding a rope over the lighthouse and Winslow is attached to it in a harness, so he can paint the side of the structure. After complimenting Winslow’s work, Wake tries to drop him a few feet lower, but it leads to him falling straight to the ground and dropping the paint everywhere. While lying on the ground, a seagull stands on his leg and picks at his pants until he swats it away. At night, Wake writes for a bit and joins Winslow for dinner. Winslow pours the drink and asks for Wake to refer to him by his name now since it’s been around two weeks. Wake laughs at this but agrees upon Winslow’s insistence. He segues into asking what brought Winslow to this line of work. Apparently, Winslow worked in timber while in Canada. Wake goes on about how he misses his sailor days because he loves the sea, but he’s cool with being a wickie now. Plus, he can’t be a sailor anymore because of his leg. When Winslow asks if he ever got married, Wake admits he spent thirteen Christmases at sea and his wife never forgave him for it since he had kids at home. Winslow doesn’t say specifically why he left the timber industry. He just says he had enough of trees. Once he left, he did some odd jobs and drifted from here to there but wasn’t able to land on anything. He just wanted to earn a nice living. Eventually, he read somewhere about earning up to $1,000 a year if he tends to a light far offshore. The further away, the more he may earn. It led him here. Following dinner, he asks Wake why it’s bad luck to kill a seagull. Apparently, the birds have the souls of sailors who have “met their maker”. In the middle of the night, Winslow goes outside to stare at the lighthouse again. Following another extensive workday and another sleepless night, Winslow walks right under the top level of the lighthouse to see Wake manning his post. Unfortunately, he’s jerking off and semen almost falls on Winslow, who’s directly under the grate Wake is standing on. Right after this, Winslow gets a hallucination of an octopus tentacle near the light.

The next day, Winslow pours water from the faucet but it’s pure sludge, so he goes out to check the cistern. A dead seagull is inside it. Another seagull stands across from Winslow and attacks him. He snatches it mid-air and smacks it across the cistern to kill it in the most brutal way possible. Almost right after, the wind has noticeably changed up, and Wake thinks it’s the calm before the storm. He advises Winslow to board up the signal house winders. The tender should be coming in the morning to pick Winslow up, so everything should be cool. However, Wake notices something is bothering Winslow, though he denies it and just asks for help on boarding up the windows. They collect some lobsters from the shore and have a nice dinner together. There, they share a hearty drink to celebrate their last night together. It turns into several more drinks and they have a drunken good time laughing, singing, and sharing stories. Wake even admits he may miss Winslow when he leaves, adding that he’s doing well and will work with the light in no time. Unfortunately, Winslow asks why he hasn’t worked with the light yet and this is enough for Wake to get mad in an instant. Despite regulation, Wake is protective of his spot and the two argue until they start laughing again. They share another drink, and Wake finally tells Winslow his actual name before toasting again. The next morning, a hungover Winslow wakes up to two full chamber pots full of shit that he has to throw outside. When he does, the wind blows it back in his face. Soon after, he gets back to work and most of it has to be done in the heavy rain. Eventually, he stops after seeing a live, injured, and unconscious mermaid in another hallucination. Once he takes the debris off of her, she wakes up, smiles, and screeches in his face, scaring him off.

Winslow runs back to the cottage and into Wake, who tells him he smells like shit and needs to clean the place up a bit before the tender comes. Later, the two wait outside in the rain for the tender to pick up Winslow, but it doesn’t come because of the horrible weather. A bothered Winslow starts drinking on the job until he’s interrupted by Wake saying that the water has gotten to the food. They have to start rationing. Winslow notes they just missed the tender by a day, and he can take the dory instead, but Wake gives him shocking news. The morning after the two got too drunk and slept through the tender’s pickup date was actually weeks ago. Additionally, he’s been asking Winslow to ration the food for weeks too, but Winslow has been yelling constantly saying, “You can take the dory out”, which confuses even Winslow as to what is going on. Basically, Wake thinks Winslow is crazy, and he doesn’t want to be stranded there with him. Though relief is coming, it will only happen if they can wait out the storm. The time they have to wait until then is indeterminate. Previously, a worker had to wait for seven months before relief came to him, so who knows how long this will take. Winslow thinks Wake is trying to scare him, but the reality starts to set in. They may be stranded for the long haul. With supplies already dwindling and their mental states deteriorating, their downward path will continue to spiral at a rapid pace.

My Thoughts:

A gloriously compelling two-hander that is as confusing as it is riveting, and arguably eventful as it is uneventful, Robert Eggers’s The Lighthouse is something you cannot forget no matter how hard you try. This strange, exciting, baffling work of art is the result of a studio letting its auteur paint a picture as he sees fit, with Eggers’s using carte blanche to create a psychological trip that is just as eye-popping and amusing as it is unsettling.

For many films released over the years, fans and cinephiles alike can see where some directors may have cut corners or compromised instead of going for a more creative approach in regard to cinematography, lighting, score, or whatever else, but The Lighthouse is an example of a film that adjusts every single detail to let this unforgettably bizarre story unfold in the way it was intended. From an aesthetic perspective, The Lighthouse is one of the very best of the last decade. With a noticeable 1.19:1 aspect ratio, a dedication to a shadowy and haunting look, careful closeups and expert lighting, and an affinity for natural noise in the background to make us feel isolated on this tiny island, the viewer feels as trapped as our main character does, with only the sounds of the seabirds, machinery, and a loud foghorn to keep him company day in and day out. It’s possible that I’m just a sucker for any black-and-white film in the modern era, but I don’t think that’s the case here. There is something truly unsettling about the black-and-white aesthetic when it comes to The Lighthouse. The eeriness right from the jump gives off the aura of something akin to 1931’s Dracula, evoking a feeling at the pit of your stomach that something is entirely wrong with this “Rock” as Thomas Wake calls it. There’s something secretive about this location. There’s something we don’t know about, but we’re too curious to walk away now, just as we see unknown faces travel towards the cottage. Just as the audience gathers their bearings, we get the first glimpse of our two-headed snake that will carry one of the wildest hour and forty minutes you may ever see. You’re still not entirely sure what’s happening and then “BOOM!”, Ephraim Winslow and Thomas Wake are standing side by side like they are being told to wait to take a picture. There they are, staring directly into the camera and into the soul of the viewer

It only lasts for a few moments, but this unusual introductory scene of both characters is just a minuscule example of the unconventional storytelling methods used in The Lighthouse. Everything is thrown to the wayside to create something almost entirely original, or though it seems. Robert and his brother Max Eggers were inspired by a myriad of things to add or influence the vision of this eclectic film, with the writings of Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.P. Lovecraft, and most importantly Sarah Orne Jewett helping shape the style and dialogue of the story. Additionally, everything else under the sun was looked at to help figure out the visuals such as certain pieces of symbolist art, photos of 1890s New England, and 1930s maritime-themed French films, which all become very obvious once it’s pointed out but all still being a wonderful ode, nonetheless. At the same time, this catalogue of ideas can easily have you lost while trying to follow the general storyline, a problem that can’t be ignored. The dialogue is very much a representation of the timeframe the movie takes place in and though it’s seemingly accurate, you’re not going to understand everything on the first viewing, especially with Willem Dafoe’s generational performance as Thomas Wake. With an old school pipe in his mouth and a rough-looking face and beard combination fit for a veteran of this line of work, Dafoe embodies the role of the hardass former sailor with a 19th century, Northeast dialect that is both confusing and gleefully entertaining. He is clearly reveling in this idiosyncratic character, the madness involved in the story, and how he sounds to add to it all.

It makes almost every quip and quote throughout deliciously memorable like him referring to seagulls as ‘gulls or when the two men are working on painting the lighthouse and he shouts below to the struggling Winslow, “Tis fine work. And yer’re making high marks in me logbook. Them’s gospel”. Dafoe’s Wake is begging you to imitate him once the film is over, but it’s not something that can be replicated. Dafoe as the unpredictable Wake is lighting in a bottle. Though there have been characters similarly written, a performance like this in such a character is a rarity. It makes us question if there ever has been anything done remotely close to this before on film. When Wake gets offended at Winslow’s comment about his cooking and goes on this monologue about hoping for Neptune to strike him dead, with the lighting heightening the seriousness of the moment, and the accompanying closeup making the frightening Dafoe look as if he’s wearing a mask, you can’t sit there and tell me he shouldn’t have been nominated for an Academy Award at the very least. The film as a whole is only further proof, but this scene alone should have gotten him nominated. If you do this, portray a human dog accurately, and recite a biblical speech while being buried alive, you have to get recognition in some way, shape, or form. It’s a travesty otherwise.

You’re telling me Tom Hanks beat him out for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood? You’re out of your fucking mind.

As previously stated, the story can be hard to follow. In the midst of the accent-heavy dialogue and moments that are hard to decipher as actual happenings or hallucinations stemming from dehydration or psychosis from lack of sleep, everything goes about as if you are a third-party peering into everyday happenings at this job. There’s not a lot of expository dialouge seen in most films to get you to wrap your head around what’s happening. Winslow is a quiet man with a dark past reveleaed in a random twist. When he gets to this island for his “four-week stint”, he’s just looking for a job and no trouble. He sits back and observes until Wake tries to engage with him over and over again. Since they’re the only two people there and loneliness can come fast, it’s hard to avoid conversation, especially when they are living together for the time being. With this, the conversation starts, but it’s all very vague as it would be with any two strangers just getting to know each other. Then, the bottle between them becomes the tension-breaker. They become a bit more friendly, though still contentious for the most part. It just loosens up a bit with time, as it would with anyone. Still, the screenplay never spells anything out or lets you in. It’s all naturally laid out, and we are just along for the ride. Nothing is rushed. Hell, you don’t learn Wake’s name until 47 minutes into the film. It’s a very cool approach to modern storytelling. Most of the time, I’d be angry with the lack of explanation in a film, but this tends to be more with science fiction, a genre dependent on explaining its world-building. The Lighthouse is old school in its story and look, but it takes a naturalistic approach in the way in which it delivers it.

Again, you’re just along for the ride and just have to wonder where this all leading to. With this, the excitement, suspense, and under-the-radar horror come with it.

In one scene, Wake is staring and speaking to the light as if it is a god before he disrobes in front of it. Later, he’s jerking off to the thing. In another scene, Winslow is jerking off to the scrimshaw of the mermaid and envisioning it as a real thing. Then, he sees sea monsters at the same time and dies within the daydream, resulting in him cumming, throwing the figurine, and crying on the floor with his pants down as he’s being rained on before stabbing the figure. What the hell is going on? Well, you are at the mercy of the filmmaker. Even when the twists start to begin, the viewer is never 100% sure on who or what to believe. Is Winslow an unreliable narrator who we believe is being wronged but is actually a deranged drunk, or is Wake a gaslighting menace? At first it seems like the latter, especially when Wake later talks about how his leg is messed up from scurvy rather than breaking it like he said before, along with his overall weirdness surrounding control of the light when he could have just gone about with regulations and let Winslow have his alternating shift just so he would shut up about it. Then, there’s the question of who tried to take the dory out only to break it and subsequently swinging the axe at the other. We see Wake swing at him with our very own eyes, but he says Winslow was the one that did it right after it happens, either implying Winslow is indeed a psychopath that doesn’t realize what he’s doing, or Wake is the psychopath who is just a lying sack of shit. Then again, maybe they both played a part in it because they have access to the same alcohol and lack of water.

On the other hand, further analyzation of the events or another rewatch entirely makes us lean with more of the former, with the third act only intensifying the shift of Winslow being a much bigger problem, despite the events of the first two acts. At that point, it doesn’t really matter, and the viewer can’t entirely trust him after Wake reveals how they are weeks past missing the tender pickup when Winslow thought it was only a day. Once we get into the visceral climax of the fight and Winslow forces Wake to act like a dog in one of the wildest sequences in recent memory, the conclusion seems to be him being the villain by proxy. Even if Winslow did indeed find the head of the previous wickie as a result of Wake being a potential killer, it doesn’t justify what he does in the third act. On top of that, who’s to say he did actually find the head in the lobster pot? Was it just another hallucination? Winslow is an unreliable narrator at best. We don’t know who to believe and there aren’t enough answers to these questions even when it comes to the finale. However, this was just as Eggers intended. Not everything has an answer. When you take everything into account and you were to hypothetically put these two on trial with what was said in the film, the case would be thrown out because of the lack of evidence and a serious case of “He said/she said”. We don’t know what’s true. Through these dehydrated, alcohol-induced moments of monotony, including one desperate scene where the two rave like rabid monkeys after sharing turpentine and honey because it’s the only thing left to consume (and Winslow drinks oil straight from the can in the final minutes), reality and imagination become intertwined to the point where anything could be looked at as a potential fact. It’s just like Wake states after he destroys the dory and swings an axe at Winslow (or does he?) as he says that this is all a figment of his imagination and Winslow is probably frost bitten in Canada looking like a maniac.

Neither character believes the other is telling the truth, but they believe in themselves as arbiters of truth. At the same time, the audience is thrown to the wayside and can believe whatever they want to believe because there is no discernible answer. It’s frustrating, but if you let go of your preconceived notions of how to approach traditional cinematic storytelling, the only way to view The Lighthouse really, you’ll find yourself marveling at times at the outrageousness put to screen.

Humor doesn’t seem to be something that would fit in such a dark and visceral tale, but there’s plenty of it to go around, as the chemistry between Dafoe and Pattinson exude so many naturally funny moments that break the tension when you least expect it like the aforementioned scene in which Winslow criticizes Wake’s cooking. Seeing him visibly distraught, Winslow drunkenly states, “Oh, don’t be such an old bitch”. It’s even funnier when Wake is trying to convince him otherwise by reminding him, “You’re fond of me lobster!”. Following this is the payoff to Wake’s speech about wanting Winslow to be struck by Neptune in the elongated monologue to which Winslow pauses and uncomfortably responds with, “Alright, have it your way. I like your cooking”. The drunken conversations that result in dancing and fighting are all wildly entertaining, especially the one where Wake almost kisses Winslow in the moment which results in a fist fight. Everything is just so random, but it keeps your attention in every frame, even if you don’t know what’s going on. On top of this, there’s the emptying of the chamber pot that flies back into Winslow’s face because of the wind and him on the verge of losing it and his rant about wanting a steak so badly that he would straight-up fuck it if it was in front of him.

Hey, I get it.

Also, the aftermath of the cottage flooding and Wake saying to himself, “Ain’t no justice left in this world” when he can’t find a match to light his pipe amidst the disaster was subtle gold.

The real joy of The Lighthouse is watching two different personalities descend into pure madness. To begin the film, Dafoe’s Wake already seems off his rocker, but the real suspense comes from Robert Pattinson’s masterful performance as the other Thomas AKA Ephraim Winslow. To make a two-hander as heavy-handed and experimental as this one, the performances are absolutely crucial to making the movie work. Pattinson shines as the perfect dance partner for Dafoe to play off of, with him being the rookie and Dafoe playing the no no-nonsense veteran. His quietness brings us into believing in him and immediately being disgusted with the toothless, spitting, yelling, always-filling-up-the-chamber-pot, “only tolerable when you’re drunk” Wake. At first, it’s easy to take his side, as Winslow is right when describing Wake as someone who isn’t human anymore since he’s so far removed from society. Before long however, Winslow becomes inhuman just as well once the alcohol continues to flow freely and move into his everyday operations at his job. Day in day out, Winslow drinks. There is never a scene where he nor Wake are drinking water. The only time Winslow attempts it, he sees the sludge coming from the sink because the cistern is messed up. After the ‘gull incident, they just stay away from it entirely and dive deeper into their rations, which is just more alcohol. Though it gives the two moments where they can have a sense of camaraderie needed to get through these trying times, as days turn into weeks almost in an instant, it brings out the worst in Winslow while doing the opposite for Wake.

Pattinson is phenomenal. First, he goes from the low-key man just doing his job to a worker with an unsettling rage visible in his stares and the energy he exudes when he comes to the realization of what is happening. Then, he slowly transitions into becoming not only increasingly difficult to work with under the circumstances but also someone who becomes obsessed with the light. He wants to see it from the beginning, mostly because he assumed protocol would be followed and he would have shifts in the lighthouse, but when he’s shut out by Wake and told to do every other exhausting labor task imaginable, it becomes a goal. Once his mind continues to be clouded by the lack of clean water or healthy habits, he starts to see it as a mythical, almost forbidden place of enlightenment. Wake sets the stage for things to come early on when he talked about the worker before Winslow, talking about how he went crazy ranting about mermaids and the like. Going along with this, he had an obsession with the light of the lighthouse and how he believed there was some enchantment attached to it, relating it to St. Elmo’s fire. After this conversation takes place, it’s obvious Winslow internalizes it, and it only comes out of his subconscious once his insomnia and constant intoxication combine to throw off his psyche. He starts to look at Wake with serious resentment, concealing a butter knife in case things go sour. Later, he tries to sneak into the lighthouse to break in but can’t do it. When he goes and tires to steal the keys from Wake’s bedside as he sleeps, he seriously considers killing Wake for a moment until he wakes up. The anger is being fueled with each scene, and the fire is turned up a notch in every subsequent moment until every single thing Wake does or says pisses Winslow off. With this, Pattinson conveys rage, frustration, and general disillusionment while still holding back as much as humanly possible before the character cannot take anymore, turning in a violent and inescapable finale that shocks you to the core.

As much praise as I give the ingenuity of the film and how creative the artist’s vision can be, it’s not necessarily perfect by any means. Though leaving us in the dark on some things is okay, there are so many inexplicable moments riddled throughout that you wished they’d hold back just a little, so things are a bit clearer. For example, following another night of drinking, Winslow runs outside to see who he thinks is Wake sleeping in the rain. However, he turns to see a naked Wake, who holds Winslow by the shoulder, and they stare at each other, with both of their eyes lit up to recreate Sascha Schneider’s 1903 painting Hypnosis. All things considered, this was one thing that didn’t translate and felt too “arthouse” compared to the rest of the movie. There are a lot of metaphors and references I can accept, but this particular moment felt more over-the-top than the rest to the point where it stuck out like a sore thumb. One particular review of The Lighthouse I’ve read talked about how the performances felt more like an “experiment than conducive to eliciting meaning”, and though I don’t entirely agree, I can see this point. However, I feel like this can be attributed more to the story rather than the performances of Dafoe and Pattinson. Aside from the confusion between what is real and what isn’t, as this is more because of the mental state they are in, the experimental nature of certain beats and moments are more the details that can be looked as something devoid of meaning. Obviously, all of it is made with intent, but this is the trouble with Eggers’s being a champion of the “questions rather than answers” approach. Some things don’t translate, but the answers will never be admitted because it could take away from what people enjoyed about the movie.

Regardless, this has to be considered when grading the film, and it’s a big part as to why it’s not I don’t rate it as high as you’d think based off the words in my review. As creative and engrossing as the feature is, some of the events taking place, and certain plot points or things said in general, are too puzzling to ignore and will bog down your overall view of the movie, especially if you only watch it once. Additionally, as much as I love the twists and turns, a viewer can’t help but want to know the truth. Otherwise, it leaves a sizable hole in your experience no matter how amazing the finale was. On a minor note, some of the hallucinations become more oddly placed and redundant after a while, and the movie could have benefitted with at least one more event happening for the characters to react to, at least to give us more insight on what could be the real personalities of both men, depending on their reactions.

*The distorted audio of the 2001-like ending and subsequent beach scene is something that will stay with you for a lifetime. Even the creepy but catchy sea shanty in the end credits adds to the overall experience. Well done Mr. Eggers.*

A visual delight, The Lighthouse is quite the experience. Experimenting with genres, themes, and characters, Robert Eggers shows why he’s a force to be reckoned with as a filmmaker, despite certain hangups about the overall perplexing story. From puking in a flooded house to punching a glass wall clock, this bewildering psychological mess is further electrically charged by two magnificent performances from an outlandish Willem Dafoe and a slow-burning maniac in Robert Pattinson.

Just remember, as annoying as those ‘gulls are, take it from these two guys…

“Bad luck to kill a seabird”.

Fun Fact: Anya Taylor-Joy asked Robert Eggers if she could play the mermaid, but he turned her down because there wasn’t a role for her and she “really should not be this particular mermaid”. I’ll chalk this up as her star power equating to something more substantial, which the mermaid was obviously not.