Lights Out Review

6.5 out or 10

Cast:

Teresa Palmer as Rebecca

Amiah Miller as Young Rebecca

Gabriel Bateman as Martin

Alexander DiPersia as Bret

Maria Bello as Sophie

Emily Alyn Lind as Young Sophie

Billy Burke as Paul

Alicia Vela-Bailey as Diana

Ava Cantrell as Young Diana

Lotta Losten as Esther

Andi Osho as Emma

Directed by David F. Sandberg

Lights Out Review:

Lights Out has a terrific new movie monster. After so many horror films with familiar tropes and situations, that alone is enough to recommend it. Diana (Alicia Vela-Bailey) is an inspired creation with a set of rules that Lights Out establishes well and early, and even when those rules get bent a little, there’s still much fun to be had in figuring out ways around them. The best moments in Lights Out are all about tweaking the audience’s expectations and fears, and because of that the scares of Lights Out are legitimately frightening and thrilling.

Unfortunately, the story surrounding the monster isn’t as elegantly done. Lights Out is the kind of film that you can see potential sequels down the road as being more effective, uncluttered with establishing all that origin, and letting this new monster run wild and free. The best horror plays with symbolism, metaphor, and larger thematic issues, and Lights Out touches on all of that, but not as effectively as it should. Much like The Babadook or It Folllows, Diana represents a lot more than what is on screen, but those films established those themes more gracefully. There is a deeper, more resonant film inside Lights Out, but it’s hamstrung by little nitpicky aspects that annoy.

Even so, there is little wasted time in Lights Out, and good thing because the film is only 82 minutes long. Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) is a young woman determined to live alone; her mother Sophie (Maria Bello) has been troubled for Rebecca’s entire life, even doing a stint in a mental institution when she was younger. Rebecca has seen her parents’ damaged relationship end with her father running off, and she’s wary of any attachments as a result, even refusing to let her longtime boyfriend Bret (Alexander DiPersia) stay overnight. But when her younger brother Martin (Gabriel Bateman) begins falling asleep in class, swearing up and down that some kind of evil creature is tormenting him, Rebecca’s past comes crashing back to her. Sophia made a friend during her time at the institution, and now that friend has returned to plague their family once again.

The best stuff in Lights Out involves the slowly-ramping tension surrounding Diana, who can only appear when there is no light. Much of the thrills involve what we can’t see, and Lights Out does a lovely job of allowing the audience to imagine some evil, capering thing in the dark corners just beyond our vision. Director David Sandberg does a wonderful job keeping everything restrained and intense, using sound and mood to elevate the atmosphere, and not using a bunch of red herrings to distract and spook the audience. When something scary happens, it’s legitimate. I can see how James Wan, who produced Lights Out, would be attracted to this material – both directors use every weapon in their considerable arsenals to establish tone and dread effectively, and like Wan, Sandberg isn’t just giving us characters to throw into the wood chipper. We care for these people, and are even sympathetic to the monster, which always makes for a better horror film. Even the boyfriend, who in a 1980s version of this movie would just be fodder, gets moments to shine and gets the audience’s empathy. There’s a pretty terrific sequence involving him and Diana that had the audience applauding.

My two issues with Lights Out feel capricious on paper – it’s always nice when a filmmaker can make a concise, short movie, but when a movie runs shorter than 90 minutes it always feels like I’m not getting the most bang for my buck, but Sandberg and screenwriter Eric Heisserer give us a lot to ponder in Lights Out’s running time. My second issue is more with the film’s struggle with Maria Bello’s Sophie, who comes across as not so much a troubled woman but as a bad parent, who pushes Rebecca and Martin to the side when Diana comes calling. Diana relies on attachment to others to stay in existence, but the “relationship” between Diana and Sophie feels disingenuous, considering that while Sophie is established to have emotional issues, she is still together enough to have a fairly functioning family and relationships. So it’s difficult to remain sympathetic to her struggle. Another nitpicky issue is that once the rules of Diana are established – that she lives in darkness – characters seem to ignore those facts when even simply entering a room. I get very irritated when a character would walk into a room and didn’t make a beeline straight to the light switch, especially after they knew that Diana could be lurking around any corner.

Still, these quibbles may not matter to an audience wanting to have a good, scary time. For stretches of Lights Out, the film delivers on that promise, and the good performances by the actors and the skills that David Sandberg displays in keeping the proceedings intense will win many over. I hope that at the very least Sandberg isn’t done with this particular movie monster, because Diana is a new, fun addition to the pantheon of horror monsters.