Lighthouse (2000)

Must See Movie...

best movie i've ever seen.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

LIGHTHOUSE is a British slasher film that had the misfortune to come out at the tail-end of the 1990s, which means that straight away the look of the film is incredibly dated. Attempts at style in the direction are cheesy and the camera angles are sometimes wrong, somehow making the movie look cheaper than it actually is. The story, too, is nothing particularly special; this is very ordinary stuff, standard slasher fare with nothing to distinguish it from a million others.It's a shame, because there are occasional flashes of brilliance here, some wonderfully-shot set-pieces which show you what this could have been had more effort been made. The extensive bathroom set-piece involving Paul Brooke's character is without a doubt the highlight of the movie and I just wish the rest of it could have been of the same calibre. Despite some gory murders, the kills are all predictable for the most part and it somewhat inevitably descends into ridiculousness at the climax.Still, you could do a lot worse than LIGHTHOUSE, and the aforementioned bathroom set-piece shows that this is occasionally a cut above the rest. James Purefoy makes for a dependable action hero and Rachel Shelley isn't bad either as the female lead who isn't always a damsel-in-distress. Watch out for RISING DAMP's Don Warrington in an amusing minor role as a prison officer.

Here we have another forgettable little ditty.A daft prison ship escape with an even more ridiculous villain called of all things "Leo".Not sure if the director or writer understood the basic layout of a lighthouse but here it goes....there is ONE stair case leading all the way to the top but some how our super killer manages to move about freely and kill people in different rooms without anyone seeing him!Some plot holes you could drive a truck through and some very dodgy casting decisions..Don warrington for one!One or two well shot scenes stick out such as the poor slob on the toilet who almost but not quite avoided being killed.No matter what super killer Leo does: swim in the sea,murder people,lurk in cellars or hack your head off, those snazzy white shoes just keep looking shop fresh.No wounder this slop took a while to darken our doors.

Lighthouse starts as brutal serial killer Dr. Leo Rook (Christopher Adamson) is caught, two months later he along with several other prisoners are on-board the prison ship the Hyperion being transported to some island prison or other. However Rook manages to kill his guards & escape in a small boat to a small nearby island where a lighthouse stands, once he gets there he kills the lighthouse crew & switches the light off which causes the Hyperion to crash into some rocks & sink. Some of the prisoners & guards manage to jump ship & make it to the lighthouse island themselves where they quickly realise Rook is there also & he carries on his killing spree dispatching the shipwreck survivors one-by-one...Retitled to the rather ambiguous Dead of Night for video release in the US this English production was written & directed by Simon Hunter & after the fantastic Tower of Evil (1972) this is easily the second best British made horror film set in a lighthouse, go on argue with me. The script takes itself extremely seriously & the whole film is played totally straight, the script also has proper adults as it's central character's rather than annoying teens who only think & talk about sex & beer like the majority of US horror films have which made for a nice change. Lighthouse is basically a dark slasher thriller set in a lighthouse, the film has a great mood & style about it but the story isn't that great & how easily does Rook, a serial killer remember, escape from that prison ship without anyone noticing he has killed two guards & literally rowed away in a small wooden boat both unchallenged & unseen. Someone wasn't doing their job properly were they? I also didn't like it that much when it slipped into standard slasher cliché territory as everyone kept on finding excuses to split up so the character's get isolated so Rook can kill them off all the more easily, didn't anyone actually figure that out? The pace is sedate but there's just about enough going on to hold ones attention, the script is fairly tight & taught which also just about injects enough personality & life into it's character's to make them interesting & worthwhile.Where Lighthouse really scores some points with me is with it's visual style & it's genuine atmosphere & mood. Lighthouse is a terrific looking film with some great cinematography, lighting, some nicely composed & framed shots & there is a fair bit of tension generated along with one or two scares although I have to deduct a point or two since the makers used that older than dirt false scare trick of having a cat suddenly jumps out of a corner & screech at a character. The crashing waves on the rocks, the eerie lighthouse itself, the dead of night with a torrential rainstorm raging all add to give Lighhouse a great feel, atmosphere, mood & gives one or two scenes some real tension. The climax is a little silly with the two leads hanging over the side of the lighthouse on a rope which is burning but never breaks! The slasher clichés kick in again at the end to as the killer never quite knows when he's dead. There's some good gore here too, there are a couple of gory slashed throats, severed decapitated head & a couple of headless bodies. Even the CGI computer aren't that bad with one or two nice uses of CGI without ever going too overboard as it were.With a supposed budget of about $1,800,0000 this looks great & most of that money obviously went on the look of the film rather than bad CGI or any has-been star. Apparently the film was mostly shot in the Three Mills Studio in London while the location shoot was at the coastal town of Hastings & the actual lighthouse used is the Bishops Rock off Lands End in Cornwall. The acting is pretty good from no-one I can say I have ever heard of or seen before or since.Lighthouse is a fairly dark & atmospheric slasher film populated by proper people rather than plastic teens, if the makers had polished the story as much as the visuals then Lighthouse could have been great as it is they didn't so it isn't. Above average but maybe lacking a certain something to take it into greatness.

This is the sort of film that gives horror films a bad name, not as a result of graphic violence or for exploitation of women. BUT simply becuase its such a rubbish film. Please Simon (Writer & Director - so you have to take responsibility) think really long and hard before attempting another film. Why is the most dangerous killer in the UK being taken to an island prison on a rust bucket ship with just ten others. Why has thew ship only apparently got a crew of 1 ! Why don't they just fly him to this prison - we see a helicopter later in the film !How come the killer manages to slip past people in the lighthouse - there's one stairs yet he manages to appear on different floors, by-passing those above or below.Even though people are killed by having there throats cuts there's never any blood stains on the floor - just on light bulbs or toilet bowlsWhy is everyone so stupid ... I'll run away for ten seconds then not be able to find my way back, even though I have a torch and a radio. And the island is illuminated by the lighthouse light. Instead I'll stumble on to the boat that the killer has hidden.