Despite its boldly stark and often beautiful B&W visuals and Defoe's memorable portrayal as a comic book Ahab, this film finds nowhere to go with its testosterone crazed conflict between lighthouse keeper and assistant but a into an increasingly grotesquely imagined morally and psychologically uncentered dark nihilism. There have been miserabalist masterpieces like THE BIRDS, FULL METAL JACKET and WHIPLASH, but this film has neither environmentak.ironies or war or actual masculine psychology on its pretentious mind. A well shot phoney