TORONTO (AP) — "Weird" is a vague and imprecise word but it's probably fair to say it can be applied to a boxy black-and-white movie about the feverish psychological battles and explicit mermaid-infused visions of two isolated and increasingly mad lighthouse keepers in 1890s Maine.

For writer-director Robert Eggers, real and mythic collide in strange and hallucinatory ways. He makes rigorously researched period films that nevertheless have an otherworldly fairy tale quality. His first film, the 2015 horror hit "The Witch," wasn't just set in 1630 but grew out of the real folktales and period-a...