Late in the 19th Century, apprentice lighthouse keeper Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson, The Batman) arrives on an isolated New England island for a four-week stint to learn the "wickie" craft from veteran lighthouse keeper Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe).
A former lumberjack, Winslow soon chafes at the drudgery of his chores under the stentorian commands of the superstitious Wake, and becomes particularly obsessed with the older man's refusal to allow him to tend the lighthouse's lamp.
The disputes between the men ebb and flow like the tide, as they gradually build a tenuous friendship that appears to be heading towards a father-son relationship, with Winslow both respecting and loathing the grizzled Wake.
However, as his time on the island draws to an end, Winslow is driven to break another of Wake's edicts: not to kill any of the militant seagulls that have the run of the island. Wake tells him it's bad luck to do so, as the birds contain the souls of dead seamen.
When a bird dies in their watertank, Winslow loses his temper and kills the first one that lands nearby.
And while Winslow is already starting to see things on the lonely island, the murder of the seagull is the signal for all Hell to break loose.
The men suddenly find themselves cut off by a seemingly never-ending storm, time plays tricks on them, details in Wake's stories change, Winslow's hallucinations get worse, the tension between the men mounts, leading to inevitable violence.
Released through Sky Store this week, The Lighthouse is a stunning, claustrophobic, physiological, horror movie.
Given the current state of the world, it is also an unexpectedly prescient study of two strong personalities locked down in a confined space for an excessive period of time - and possibly a template for many more movies to come in the next few months and years.
Inspired by historical events, once again - as he did with The Witch - writer/director Robert Eggers demonstrates his ear for linguistic verisimilitude, with the two, mighty, central actors in The Lighthouse not scrimping on the thick accents and genuine, period, vocabulary.
Beautifully shot in crisp black and white and shown in an archaic, square, ratio that accentuates the claustrophobic story, the film's escalating weirdness embraces both Lovecraftian horror and David Lynch levels of peculiarity that will have you wondering about your own sanity as well as that of the men trapped in the titular edifice.