Review of Lights Out (2016) by Megankyhl — 17 Oct 2016

When Childhood Nightmares Come Back to Haunt Us.

Lights Out is the recent horror movie that intrigued us from the start as we saw the many trailers while we were scrolling through our facebook feed over the summer. It fed our imagination with the combination of the monsters-in-the-closet mindset and the idea that when the lights go out our darkest and deepest fears are unleashed. Director David F. Sandberg, relatively new to the horror scene, shows his talent with this movie and also the likes of Annabell 2, another horror film.

Starring in the film is the familiar actress Maria Bello, who gets to portray Sophie the deranged mother whose depression over her second husband’s death leads her to push away her children and resort to an old friend. Her eldest child Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) who left home years ago gets thrown back into her old life when her young step-brother Martin (Gabriel Bateman) asks her for help with their mother after the recent passing of his father. Sophie’s childhood “friend” she met at a mental institution only known as Diana (Alicia Vela-Bailey) returns as she goes off the deep end. Diana’s possessiveness over Sophie leads to strange behavior, specifically when she takes lightbulbs out in order to let darkness consume the house and enable Diana to stay. When the lights are on everything is normal other than Sophie’s lethargic behavior, but when the lights go out Diana comes out to play and nothing is getting in between her and Sophie. Rebecca isn’t unfamiliar to this behavior from her mother or Diana, she is determined to save her mother with Martin from this satanic entity who is taking over the mother she once knew.

Sandberg creates a beautifully terrifying monster that plays off of our fear of the darkness. Diana is increasingly intriguing throughout the film as we learn more about her, and her history with Sophie. Even after the movie when I crawled under the safety of my covers in bed the silly fears of the fictional character Diana didn’t escape me. The way they portray her in the movie is spectacular; she has no identifiable features other than the figure of a female, her “skin” or body is entirely black, she can move lightning fast appearing out of nowhere and even coming to Rebecca’s apartment, her ability to hurt people and even kill them, like she did to Sophie’s second husband and Martin’s father in the beginning of the movie, and her strange backstory make this character what she is. Overall, this character’s originality is so simple yet compelling when paired with the mysteriousness of her history and connection with Sophie and even Rebecca.

The opening of the movie shows us the horror we had come for from the start as Sophie’s husband and Martin’s father is met face to face with Diana and evidently killed. The dark scenes throughout the movie are expertly filmed and the use of lighting, whether it was the tattoo sign by Rebecca’s apartment or the uv light from the basement scene, make the movie unique. The lighting help tell the story of Lights Out indicating the bright and well lit areas a safe zone and the dark areas a place where Diana’s wrath is reachable. For the majority, the filming and originality are excellent quality, although the few scenes played out through Sophie’s childhood at the mental institution are all too similarly filmed to the ones in Ouija. If the character’s backstories were executed differently and had more content, in order for it to seem more complete, it would have been more effective rather than thrown at the viewer in a quick and displeasing way. It is too big of a jump from one plot point to another and poorly done compared to the rest of the movie.

Emotions are explored in this movie especially between Sophie and Rebecca. These actresses are perfect in portraying the frayed relationship between mother and daughter and the emotions that go with it. Sophie’s character goes deep with emotions as her depression comes and goes so does Diana feeding off of her unhappiness. I feel like the movie gets really deep when Rebecca decides to put away her grudges toward her mother and try and help her get better. Even though (spoiler alert) Sophie dies at the end of the movie heroically by choosing her children over Diana and killing herself, I think Rebecca gets closure about her relationship with her mother because she knew her real mom still existed beneath the distorted and depressed mother she grew to know.

Additionally, this movie is quite short for a horror film being only a mere 81 minutes and it shows towards the end. Through the climax of the movie everything is fast paced and action packed and we are just starting to find out the rest of the unknown information about Diana in the basement scene. Then abruptly the ending comes leaving us surprised but more confused than anything. Jumping from Sophie killing herself to Rebecca, Martin and Rebecca’s boyfriend sitting in the back of an ambulance leaves us with so many unanswered questions and a conclusion that ultimately sucks. It almost seems like Sandberg was trying to leave a cliffhanger for a possible 2nd movie but failed in making it seem that way. It needed to have more content towards the end and contributing to a longer and more satisfying ending, enabling enough room for an undecided 2nd film.

In conclusion, If you want to be left leaving the movie theater brushing off your childhood nightmare where monsters exist in the dark you’ll be pleased with Lights Out. Ultimately this is a great horror movie that left us questioning our safety in the protection of our beds at night and features great originality and performances by stars like Maria Bello, Teresa Palmer, and Gabriel Bateman. I would give this movie a 7.5 / 10 and would enjoy seeing whether David Sandberg will decide to make a sequel to this fantastic film.