It probably comes as no big surprise that film director Tim Burton has always had a soft spot for the strange, the surreal, and the slightly unsettling. I mean, he’s Tim Burton, the man whose filmography includes Edward Scissorhands, Frankenweenie, Beetlejuice, and Sleepy Hollow. So when he walked into Paris’ JM Video Club, one of just two remaining video rental stores in the city, for a Konbini interview, it was inevitable he’d start mentioning movie titles that would make most casual moviegoers scratch their heads. For thirty minutes, Burton geeked out over the classics that he loved, moving from Japanese horror to old monster flicks without missing a beat. But out of all the titles he mentioned, only a few modern films actually made the cut. One that shouldn’t surprise fans was Robert Eggers’ 2019 A24 horror The Lighthouse. If you’ve seen it, you’ll definitely understand why.
“I loved its dreamlike quality. I loved the performances. I loved the vibe,” Burton said. “I hadn’t seen a movie in a while that I kept thinking about, but that movie resonates. It stayed with me for a long time. It’s rare for me and it’s nice when it happens. You know that it’s touched something inside.”
Given his love for black-and-white cinema, The Lighthouse is definitely the kind of film you’d expect to see in Burton’s DVD collection (as he prefers physical media). Set in the late 1800s, Eggers’ film, which stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as lighthouse keepers whose sanity slowly crumbles, is the kind of psychological horror that burrows into your brain and probably doesn’t ever go away.
Willem Dafoe himself was drawn to the film’s strangeness from the start. “I had seen The Witch and I was a great admirer of it,” Dafoe told MovieMaker Magazine. “I met Robert Eggers, we got along fantastically, and we shared a lot of interests. Once he had written The Lighthouse with his brother, he sent it to me and said, ‘Look, we can make this film. You and Rob Pattinson. Do you want to do it or not?’ And of course I did.”
Of course, Burton’s conversation about strange movies he loves didn’t stop at The Lighthouse. He also mentioned his love for monster movies, like Godzilla (1954), The War of the Gargantuas and Nosferatu. The conversation also steered towards his less-than-rosy time at Disney, and his thoughts on modern superhero films. As the man behind 1989’s Batman and 1992’s Batman Returns, you might expect some nostalgia for the genre. But no. “Not really into them,” he admitted. “I lost interest after Batman Returns.”
So, don’t expect to see him taking the helm of any DCU projects for James Gunn anytime soon. Still, his relationship with Warner Bros. seems better than that with Disney. After all, his upcoming film, a remake of the cult sci-fi classic Attack of the 50 Foot Woman starring Margot Robbie, will be released by the studio.
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