Lights Out was the perfect embodiment of a mediocre horror film. It used all the typical horror movie tropes (creepy basements, anyone?) and hit all the right notes for a semi-plausible and wholly horrifying creature. At times, the acting was corny, especially from our main character, Becca, who I couldn’t help but compare to a blonde Kristen Stewart (who maybe, sort of, almost emotes more).
It’s a decent enough film with plenty of jump scares to get those easily gotten, but it just wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Everybody’s scared, to some degree, of the dark… the foreboding… the unknown. There’s so many places that Sandberg could have gone with that, but in the end, he basically just made a film that said that people with depression should totally kill themselves. Good… job? I can only assume that’s the reason that he’s gone about making a sequel that was announced the same month that this film hit box offices – because he done fucked up.
You could call Lights Out a ghost story, but really, our antagonist is no ghost. She’s something far creepier, something that only comes about in the dark. I found that impressive, actually, that they actually explained why the creature could only approach in the dark – they actually gave a somewhat logical reason behind it. That’s a nice change, instead of just saying, “oh ghosts only happen at night time” – WHY do ghosts only happen at night time?
Diana is one of the scariest paranormal entities in a long while, I think… on par with Valak, who was a pretty darn spooky nun. I think Lights Out is indeed worth a watch (or two, in my case) and I’m intrigued to see the sequel, especially since they seemed to wrap up the loose ends pretty damn well at the end of it all. Where can they go from here? We’ll see…
Tagged: 2016, david f sandberg, diana, gabriel bateman, Horror, lights out, teresa palmer, tropes
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