Sophie and her boyfriend Bret investigate the connection of Sophie with Diana and they come to a shocking revelation about their past. This leads to Rebecca remembering her own childhood experiences with Diana making her realise just how long Diana has had a hold on their mother and how possessive she can be. Well, it’s not long before Diana shows up and starts to make things ever so slightly uncomfortable for the pair. She agrees to look into the matter and decides to have Martin come live with her for the time being. This introduces his step-sister Rebecca who lives alone in an apartment. He overhears her having conversations in her room at night with the shadows in a darkened corner which naturally scares the crap out of him.ĭue to these events, Martin obviously struggles with sleep which gets the attention of the social worker at his school. If that wasn’t enough, it seems that the life form is named Diana and has some sort of hold over the boy’s schizophrenic mother, Sophie. It is revealed that Paul’s frightened son Martin is being haunted by the same creature. Paul is later dragged into the darkness and gruesomely killed by the demon. She warns owner Paul about the apparition and leaves. She then sees nothing when the lights are on. Creepily, only when she turns the lights off. In a textiles warehouse, co-worker Esther sees a silhouette of a woman with monstrously long fingers. Lights Out takes this simple concept and creates a film out of it, let’s see how it does. It’s not simply the jet-black appearance of an unilluminated environment but the basic trepidation of what could be camouflaged within. That’s not saying that horror cannot be frightening if it takes place in daylight. How can something so simple have the ability to evoke dread amongst viewers? Imagine Dracula, an icon of horror that is synonymous with darkness and now imagine it once again but brightly lit instead it’s nowhere near as effective. It’s the cinematic equivalent to a carnival funhouse: a bit scary when you’re traversing it, but utterly forgettable (and mildly regrettable) once it’s over.Throughout history the dark has been used as a device to add an extra layer to horror movies. Lights Out has a few scary, funny moments and Bello and Palmer are both game, but the reliance on cheap shocks does the film no favors. There is a frail hanger with which the film attempts to drape some hazy theme about mental health issues on, but that is second to what amounts to an onslaught of increasingly ineffective jump scares. They all end up at Sophie’s house, trapped with the, um, lights out, armed with a hand-crank flashlight (ever a suspense builder), some preternaturally stable candles, and a black light. Sophie’s son Martin (Bateman) begins to be terrorized by the spirit, and reaches out for help to his estranged stepsister Rebecca (Palmer). But when the lights inevitably go out again, poof! she’s closer and about to grab your jugular. The conceit here is that there is a ghost, Diana (Vela-Bailey), haunting Sophie (Bello) that can only be seen – in shadowy silhouette – when the lights are out. Wan tapped Sandberg to flesh out his short of the same name into a feature, and while Lights Out has a clever gimmick of the fear of the dark that’s been a goldmine for scares since cinema immemorial, even at a lean 81 minutes, it wears out its welcome pretty quickly. Sandberg, whose unnerving, online shorts caught the attention of contemporary horror mogul James Wan (the Saw movies, the Insidious movies, the Conjuring movies, all future horror movies, and – most horrific of all – the upcoming Aquaman movie). If nothing else, Lights Out is a fairy tale Hollywood success story for Swedish director David F.
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