Amusingly enough, the obnoxious Nissan-driving boyfriend was the only character in the whole movie who actually seemed to know what the hell he was doing. Lights Out redeems itself in its last twenty minutes, when it really lets itself play around with the whole light & dark stuff. Jeremy described it as “Young Adult Babadook,” and he was pretty much spot on.īut yeah. There’s the whole ‘dark-monster’ thing, of course, but the movie also plays around (if somewhat heavy handedly) with the idea of the ‘monster as mental illness’ metaphor. At least Maria Bello digs into the whole ‘crazy mother’ character, in easily the best performance of the flick.Ĭomplain as I may, Lights Out has some really interesting ideas. I guess I’m coming from a position of “why wouldn’t you put as much boobs and fake blood into your movie as possible?” I guess I’m just a grumpy old man (and/or grungy horror fan) so I’m not hugely excited about ‘lighter’ horror tropes like ‘the scrappy’ kid or … honestly, the scrappy kid in Lights Out just comes off as annoying. But, I admit, I’m a little biased against PG-13 rated horror flicks. It doesn’t help that Lights Out is PG-13, either. Little details like this are enough to make the movie seem … well, too movie-like, I guess. I’m a bit of a car guy, so I notice this sort of thing, but still. And not even ‘oh, this shitty thing is all I could afford.’ Seriously, it had seat mounted DVD players. However, the thing that really got me is that the ‘boyfriend’ character, who is supposed to be all rebellious and stuff due to the fact he’s got a beard, tattoos, and a leather jacket … drives a Nissan hatchback. More often than not, most of the characters act ‘horror movie stupid,’ which I suppose is forgiveable enough. Honestly, it’s the little things that stuck out at me. The thing is, in padding a three minute short into a full length movie, Lights Out stumbles. Samberg came up with the idea in a short horror film (again, called Lights Out) which was impressive enough to get him a full movie deal, so good on him. Throw in some creaky floors in big shadowy houses, and the movie pretty much writes itself.ĭirector David F. Basically, there’s a creepy murderous shadow-ghost who disappears when exposed to light. Lights Out operates on a juicy, straightforward premise. The best monsters have ‘rules’ that dictate how they function: Vampires are burned by the sun and hate crosses, Werewolves turn during the full moon and die by silver, Predators see in infrared and only kill people who are armed, and so on. But my buddy Jeremy from A Brew to A Kill called me up and was like “hey, wanna see Lights Out for free?” And, well … free is a good number. Palmer and Maria are also effective in their respective roles.I suppose I should do an UNFAIR COMPARE on the Ghostbusters reboot, eventually. Perhaps he'll excel in the upcoming Annabelle sequel which has a premise with lots of potential. Sandberg tries his best to keep the concept going however and his direction shows promise. The short story succeeds precisely because the initial scare is clever and the concept holds steam within the few minutes the story takes to finish - however, this feature length Lights Out loses steam, purely because whilst the initial scares are cleverly put together, the audience becomes so familiar with the concept that the would-be scares no longer terrify, but in some instances become comical. This presence can only be seen - yep you guessed it - when the lights are out. It tells the story of a mother (Maria Bello) and daughter (Teresa Palmer) and their estranged relationship, brought about in part by the mother's mental illness and also a ghostly presence that has latched itself on to the mother.
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