Lights Out Review

     The horror genre has undergone a bit of a revolution in the past few years. Despite churning out piles of garbage like Paranormal Activity or Ouija, there have been plenty of good titles like The Babadook and It Follows (one of my favorite films) to balance them out. This year is no exception, with movies like The Witch and The Conjuring 2 showing that the genre still has quite a bit of life left in it. That brings us to Lights Out, an indie darling that originated as a very cool and creepy short film and fell under the wing of James Wan (the director of The Conjuring 2). It has all the elements of a good horror film, but does it actually succeed? Let’s find out.

     After an intense opening scene, the film follows a broken family that is being haunted by a strange creature that can only move in the darkness called Diana. With the death of his father having just occurred, the young boy of the family, Martin (Gabriel Bateman), begins to notice his mentally unstable mother Sophie (Maria Bello) conversing with something that he can’t see. When he starts to feel unsafe, he goes to his half-sister Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) and her sorta boyfriend Bret (Alexander DiPersia) for help. As Sophie’s mental state deteriorates further and Diana goes on the attack, Rebecca and Martin attempt to discover the truth behind this entity, and experience her wrath as a result.

     Without a doubt, the best thing about this film is the cinematography and how it creates a creepy atmosphere. David Sandberg, who also created the original short film, knows how to create his shots so that danger always seems within reach, even in well-lit daytime scenes. The darkness represents Diana’s domain, and any time a character passed by a darkened room or one of the lights began to flicker I got incredibly nervous. I didn’t know when Diana was going to appear, and that’s one of the smart and actually scary things about this film.

     Diana is a really unique creature, especially in terms of recent horror movie monsters, and as Sandberg begins to reveal more and more about her she only becomes more frightening. She’s not just some mindless beast like Jason Voorhees or the Alien. She is equal parts evil and intelligent. While Rebecca is no fool and takes proactive measures to counter Diana, the entity only steps up her game in her efforts to torment and ultimately kill her prey. It makes her incredibly interesting and scary as a monster, since you get the feeling that she is always one step ahead of our protagonists.

     One of the reasons this film works as well as it does is that you actually care about the characters, which I attribute to both the writers and the actors. Teresa Palmer seems like she’s just doing a Kristen Stewart impression at first, but she grows quickly and shows more complex and interesting sides to her, particularly in her relationship with her mother. Gabriel Bateman is great (which I don’t say about most child actors) as Martin, showing a range of talent that people at his age just shouldn’t possess. He’s going to be a big star one day, I can see it already. I liked Bret’s character fine, and I think DiPersia brings a lot of charm to him, but there’s not much dimension to him beyond “the guy who just barely made it out of the friend zone.”

     The real surprise for me in terms of acting was Maria Bello, who was able to be both creepy and sympathetic as Sophie, the woman haunted by Diana. At first she is defiant in her feelings towards this entity, believing Diana to be her friend and showing resentment towards Rebecca for leaving her after the disappearance of her father. As Rebecca and Martin are put in danger, Sophie changes into a much more proactive and stronger character, battling her mental illness and her “friend” in order to protect her children. You can interpret the film’s meaning any way you choose, but I personally think this is about depression (the same way The Babdook was about grief) and how it can destroy the life of the sufferer and those around him/her. This metaphor is only strengthened when it is revealed that Diana only appears when Sophie is weak, taking advantage of her in order to remain powerful.

     For all the good things I’m saying (and they are good), there are two major things that brought it down for me. The first is most definitely a personal thing, but it bugs me in every single horror movie I see. I’m talking about the jump scare. You know what jump scares are if you’ve watched any Paranormal Activity movie or other things like them. I hate them because I just feel that it’s the filmmakers being lazy and not trying to generate true horror in you. I’m not scared when Diana jumps at a door when nobody’s expecting it, I’m just temporarily startled. There’s no tense build-up or something to look forward to, just the equivalent of a scene where what you think is the monster is revealed to be a cat.

     I’m annoyed by this because the film started out avoiding that cliché in a really cool way. The opening scene, with the woman flicking the lights on and off and seeing Diana, is a great way to scare people with something like a jump scare and generate real fear in them. You see the monster on the screen several times in those few seconds, and you’re waiting for the moment when she attacks. The fact that you’re sitting there and expecting violence, probably with your fingernails digging into your theater seat, shows how good tension and scares can be when done correctly. There are several scenes like this, but as the film reaches its conclusion it relies more and more on jump scares and cheap tricks, which really annoyed me.

     The other problem I had is definitely objective, and that is that the film breaks its own rules in the third act. They clearly establish that Diana cannot be present where there is light, but near the end she pops up all over the place when there’s a light. There’s a scene where someone is shining a flashlight directly in her direction and she still grabs them and kills them. While I guess that can be scary that’s a complete disregard for what made this premise so interesting in the first place, and it makes you start asking questions that you shouldn’t be asking yourself during a movie like this. I was completely immersed in this world, with only the jump scares taking me out of it, but these logic problems were so severe that I just couldn’t help but stop and ponder them while I was sitting in the theater rather than enjoy the film.

     Regardless of my issues, Lights Out is still one of the more unique and genuinely creepy horror films out there today. It has the scares needed to justify the ticket price and it provides an interesting and heartbreaking story to enhance the experience. I just wish that, even with the relatively short length of the film, they had stuck to the premise and not descended into generic horror clichés.

My Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Lights Out is in theaters now.