Lights Out has very little of Wan’s fingerprints on it. His films are wildly popular, and have always surprised me by being much better than their advertising would ever lead you to believe, so I became interested. I was perhaps a tad shocked when a debut film had a line out the door of excited early audience members, but one Google search led me to the revelation that the film had an endorsement and producer credit by and to one James Wan of Saw and Conjuring fame. For reasons of Adblock, I had not seen the myriad of ads that plastered the walls of Facebook and played before every Youtube video for weeks until the release of the film, so I knew very little about it before I came to the theater for my press screening. What few times I’ve seen films in recent memory left too little an impression to materialize into a solid piece of writing and so I have been away, off in this cinematic exile from which little belabored the thought of my return.īased on his short film that circulated the internet not long back, Lights Out is the debut feature of director David F. Stuck watching cartoons, playing video games, and drinking enough Sierra Nevada to turn the town of Chico, California into a minor bottling metropolis. I don’t know, but for quite awhile I have been stuck. Maybe it was finals, maybe it was the production of my most recent film, maybe it was that Batman Vs. I know, it’s hard and it’s scary for me too. For the last month or two, I have been… (dramatic musical stab) Just shut off the lights, and your brain, and get scared.Readers, I have to make an awful admission. It doesn’t over-inflate itself with heavy handed dialogue or a convoluted story. As a whole, it’s not a groundbreaking film by any means, but it did manage to scare me more than any other mainstream film this year. By the final frame, I was quite spooked (and wasn’t thrilled about having to take my dog outside into the shadowy, terrifying world right after). Some of the visuals of Diana lurking in the dark are truly the stuff of nightmares.ĭespite the plot being fairly standard horror fare, “ Lights Out” is incredibly effective at scaring its audience. The emphasis on darkness requires the viewer’s full attention to look at every shot carefully, waiting in tense anticipation. The scares are carefully crafted in a way that reminded me of the best haunted house attractions. It’s not a film driven by characters or a deeply engrossing story. The thing I enjoyed most about “Lights Out” was how it managed to genuinely freak me out. I will say that the short film is one of the most unnerving shorts I have ever seen, and it is very worthy of the attention it received. It would be best to avoid it so the scares in the feature are more shocking. As tempting as it may be, I encourage you not to make the same mistake as me and watch it before “ Lights Out”. Sandberg managed to take his 2013 short film of the same name and stretch it into a feature quite nicely. Most importantly, they are trying to figure out WHO IS DIANA?…the mysterious figure that Sophie talks to in the dark, behind closed doors.ĭirector David F. The film follows 20-something Rebecca ( Teresa Palmer) and her little brother Martin (Gabriel Bateman) as they try to determine why their mother Sophie ( Maria Bello), is becoming increasingly mentally disturbed. Because of that, I won’t give many details of the plot away. The film starts with a bang, and hardly lets up during its relatively short (80min) run-time. It taps into a primal fear of the dark that EVERYONE shares (at least a little bit). “ Lights Out” is a horror film where the scares are based around those sensations. Sometimes it was easier just to stay on the couch until morning. All of the shadows would take take shape, and I would have to repeat to myself that there is DEFINITELY NOT A PALE-FACED GHOUL FOLLOWING ME DOWN THE HALLWAY. The act of moving from the couch to the kitchen became a harrowing experience. I loved watching scary movies as a kid, but the fun would always take a dark turn when the credits rolled, and suddenly I was left alone…in the dark…in silence. You can always tell if a movie was scary by how you behave after it is over.
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