Aubrey Plaza and Bill Murray Parody The Lighthouse in Independent Spirit Award Promo

For genre fans, there were few better films in 2019 than Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse, even if its box office performance might not have been as massive as entries into well-known franchises that debuted last year. Horror viewers weren’t the only ones to recognize the film’s accomplishments, as the Independent Spirit Awards nominated the film in five categories. Being held the day before the Academy Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards will be hosted by Aubrey Plaza and highlights independent films, with a new promo for the ceremony honoring the unique dialect on display in The Lighthouse, which also enlisted Bill Murray.

The film is described, “From Robert Eggers, the visionary filmmaker behind the modern horror masterpiece The Witch, comes this hypnotic and hallucinatory tale of two lighthouse keepers (Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson) on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s. As an approaching storm threatens to sweep them from the rock and strange apparitions emerge from the fog, each man begins to suspect that the other has become dangerously unmoored.”

While the horror genre is often ignored by the Academy Awards, with Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water being exceptions in recent years, The Lighthouse earned a nomination for Best Cinematography. At the Independent Spirit Awards, the film is nominated for Best Male Lead (Robert Pattinson), Best Supporting Male (Willem Dafoe), Best Cinematography (Jarin Blaschke), Best Editing (Louise Ford), and Best Director (Eggers).

This promo video parodies the gruff dialects the performers embraced to properly convey sailors from the 19th century, with the shooting experience itself being immensely grueling. Pattinson previously revealed that tensions ran so high on set during the difficult shoot that he nearly came to blows with Eggers.

“That’s the closest I’ve come to punching a director,” Pattinson explained to Interview Magazine. The actor noted that the reaction came from a scene where Eggers was spraying him with a hose for a scene, with Pattinson pointing out, “It was like some kind of torture. It definitely creates an interesting energy.”

Despite that isolated incident of tension, Eggers, Pattinson, and Dafoe all showed immense camaraderie when promoting the film heading into its release.

Find out if The Lighthouse comes out on top at the Independent Spirit Awards and the Oscars this weekend by tuning in on Saturday and Sunday. The Lighthouse is out now on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD.

What did you think of the video? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!