Lights Out (2016)

The first must-see film of the year.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This movie is your run of the mill jump scare horror film. It has a neat concept that will keep you worried for a few days, but it's nothing groundbreaking. However, the character Bret is by far one of my favorite characters in any movie. He is compassionate, understanding, fearless, and helpful. There isn't a bad bone in that guys body, and he is a role model for men everywhere. Just him alone made this movie worth watching.

Being bloated is never a good thing, however, also being too short while not really delivering the full story, and/or the full story in a compelling way, is also not a good thing. Lights Out lost me with its weak story development, its pacing as well as its short running time.Nobody ever explains the full situation to Bret. Diana's story comes to light in a very dim fashion. Rebecca is busy calling here mother a "nutjob", while she knows exactly what she is going through, and what makes it especially worse, is how that was shown literally in the scene before that comment. Sure, perhaps she is in denial, however the film doesn't portray that very well about her. All she seems like is distant, walls up, closed in and impersonal.Also, Martin knew at his age that Diana was the cause of his father's death, yet Rebecca spent all her life, under the impression that her father just ran out on them, when she went through the very same ordeal Martin did. Okay sure, maybe she didn't click for whatever reason, but for her to inform her mother, as if she didn't know either, just raises some concerns.The movie cutting to post Paul's death without some kind of reference or anchor, was jarring. For a short while you find yourself asking, how long has he been dead? It feels like its been a day, but the film gives the impression that it has been much longer, maybe even years, but is it? Can it?Then there's Rebecca still opting to stay in the house, to try and save her mother, when she already knows that Diana cannot harm her, which renders the entire endeavour moot.Lights Out has issues, that aren't necessarily plot holes, but rather more disregarded and dismissed expositions, and at 1 hour 15 minutes, I guess something was always going to suffer.From there, as gorgeous as Teresa Palmer is, and my oh my she is a stunner, her performance in this film was subpar, while everybody else was somewhat forgettable. The horror bit of the film was satisfying enough however, though it felt a bit repeated since it occurred in the same manner throughout the film without evolving. 5.4/10.

With decent metascores, I figured this movie would be worth a watch. The trailer looked cool, the concept seemed cool, even the movie poster was cool. But I have to say, while I made it through till the end, and was mildly entertained, it was just nothing special.This movie is fairly formulated...and I felt like I had seen it before. I had, but in parts of many other horror movies. From the kid being drug under the bed by his ankles, to the basement door slamming shut and locking the people in the basement, to the cops getting killed because they ignored the pleas of the people who knew about the monster, to the discovered box of files linking the monster to a dead mental institution patient, I just felt like I'd seen this all a hundred times.Marie Bello was good, as always, but the rest of the acting was just OK. The little boy was annoying because he didn't act very well. The effects were good, and the monster was creepy. Other than that I don't have much positive things to say about it.If you are looking for a good movie in this genre, watch The Babadook instead.

When we were young, it was normal that we were afraid of things that go bump in the night, or that monsters were hiding under the bed or in the closet and that going to bed at night seemed labourious not to mention frightful. As we get older we adult up and try to overcome our fears and manifestations and expunge all that nonsense. But in reality, the dark isn't the scary things, but the things that come when only it is dark. The slightest house settling noise can send chills down your spine. And if that doesn't make one hide under the covers, how about a freaky, wiry-haired silhouette gazing down at you from a nearby doorway? And once you turn the lights on, it disappears. This aforementioned spook is the terror is the topic from the directing debut of David F. Sandberg 2016 horror film "Lights Out". The creepy figure fueling nightmares galore is an evil demonic spirit of Diana who was a longtime friend of a mentally unstable mother named Sophie (Maria Bello) who was killed when a medical experiment went awry and that the exposure to the light took her life away. Thirty years later, Sophie has been in contact with her and seems to materialize when it's dark, but once you turn on the lights, the vanishes. Diana was the only childhood friend of Sophie's and Diana will likely attack if her personal existence feels threatened and will dish out destruction with no mercy or remorse. Although she is a powerful force to be reckoned with, she still has a sensitivity towards light and the only way to avoid her vengeance is to stay out of the shadows.Sophie was once wed to someone who left her several years ago and has two off-springs. She has an adult daughter named Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) who has left her troubled way and has moved into a one bedroom apartment with her boyfriend Bret (Alexander DiPersia) and a preteen son named Martin (Gabriel Bateman) who unfortunately has to face the wrath of his mother's insanity. Everything that Rebecca encountered when she was young, Martin is now facing the the same consequences. When Martin tells Rebecca that Sophie is conversing to a spirit, Rebecca send Martin to move into their place to keep him safe from any possible evil lurking in that house. But then social-services chimes in and disapproves of the idea, so then Rebecca returns back to their home and confront this evil presence that's terrorized her when she was small. Originally based off of Sandberg's short film, the material has successfully been expanded to the 81 minute mark. Though considered short by movie standards, it's actually the contrast that leads to the archaic philosophical statement of "less means more" and that saying never comes truer than this movie. It goes straight on with the story and doesn't go back on its delivery and doesn't cut corners in any way possible to expose out all its fear to leave even strong people emotionally scarred. The first scenes are chilling and stays its way throughout and no cliche is padded on, even the flashback of Sophie's childhood memory with Diana has an effective moment where you can feel a bit of sympathy and remorse for both Sophie and Diane. It is also a breath of fresh air to make our leading heroine like Rebecca as a strong, independent character, which happens quite frequently, but Palmer does a serviceable job of indicating what it means to be when dealing with being raised in a broken family. Although a film of this genre and situations has been done to death, "Lights Out" is also guarded with a PG-13 banter which means there will be jump-scares a plenty, but the movie is still a cut above the other horror films with its effective use of lighting and the dankness keeps the story alive while you're heart is palpitating while the scenarios succeeds to make things all the more unsettling.