On October 3rd 1849, Edgar Allan Poe, that legendary master of gothic mystery and horror, was found stumbling about the streets of Baltimore wearing clothes that were not his, gibbering feverishly about something we know not what, because he never regained coherence before buying the farm in the early hours of Sunday 5th October. Reportedly, Eddie’s last words were, “Lord, help my poor soul”. It was one hell of an appropriate sign off, but the mystery doesn’t end there, because the book he was drafting at the time seemed to be an ominous portent to this strange exit. Was the tale of the Lighthouse Keeper an odyssey too far into the mouth of madness?
Floppy-haired traveller J.P. (Matt O’Neill) is boat-wrecked on a lonely peninsular en route to San Francisco. Quite what he thinks he’s playing at trying to solo row there in the open sea is never explained but he’s clearly not the full shilling. Spying an alluring mystery woman (Rachel Riley – no not that one) on the shore, he follows her up a dangerous cliff-face only to fall back down, narrowly avoiding getting his face flayed off by the jagged rock, Lucio Fulci-style. He awakes in the custody of Wez from The Road Warrior (Vernon Wells) who tells him in his best Liam Neeson growl that there is no mystery woman, the two of them are alone in his desolate, crumbling lighthouse and whatever he does, to never let the candles go out…
This is a decent little horror flick that knowingly riffs on the ripe melodrama of the classic Roger Corman American International Poe features while also bringing, with its seaside atmospherics, a distinct whiff of the various coastal-set MR James horror tales the BBC has made over the years. The trio of leads are all on-message with the material with Wells in particular manfully wrestling down the portentous, Poe-esque dialogue and coming up smelling of (dead) roses.
And it’s zombies, of course, which come in the dark, with some excellent make-up effects for the very low budget. What really lets it down is some appalling CGI whenever we see the lighthouse on the cliff and during the zombie attacks when bits of them fall off and start glowing for some reason or other. It really gets silly in the final destruction of the lighthouse, which looks like an end-of-week assignment at an After Effects for Beginners course.
In the end, you can sort-of believe this is the tale Poe might have told had he stayed sane that mad October night, although the final scene’s familiar narrative rug-pull will either have you grinning or groaning in recognition. Worth checking out if you come across it (as opposed to seeking out), The Lighthouse Keeper is a modest scare-fest which channels the neurotic introspection Poe brought to the likes Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum without bringing anything new to the creaky old table.
EDGAR ALLAN POE’S THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: BENJAMIN COOPER / SCREENPLAY: CARL EDGE, BENJAMIN COOPER / STARRING: VERNON WELLS, MATT O’NEILL, RACHEL RILEY, MONTY WALL / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
