Everyone is saying the acting in this movie is amazing and while I think Willem Dafoe gives a great performance, Robert Pattinson completely overacts and his accent work in this film is poor.

With regard to the story, there is either something incredibly deep happening where the lighthouse is a metaphor and this is all happening in this guy's imagination or nothing is happening at all and it's just a poorly written story about a guy overacting on a rock.

If the film is trying to be deep and have a hidden meaning, which I suspect it is, it fails miserably; there is no point in having a deeper meaning under the film's surface if on the surface there is nothing. Movies like Mulholland Drive deal with abstract ideas and handle them tastefully, meaning that even if you don't know the deepest meanings of the film after the first watch, you can still piece together the main points of what's happening, enjoy the movie, and catch deeper meaning on rewatches.

The only good things about this film: the character dialogue are distinctly written, the cinematography is great, and Willem Dafoe does good job.

Very disappointing.