Lights Out

Gillipedia Official Rating: Mediocrity at its finest

          I remember this film being released right around the same time as Don’t Breathe. It’s this latter film that really made waves, but I always thought the concept of Lights Out was just so good. Like with The Departed, It Follows, and In Time, there are just some films that start off with really cool ideas. And while those first two films follow through on their execution, I would file Lights Out near In Time in a folder labelled “Wasted Potential.” 

          Lights Out follows a young boy and his older sister as they deal with their depressed mother trapped by some sort of entity that has such an extreme sensitivity to light that it only can be seen in the dark. A horror villain that can only hurt you in the dark brings about memories of A Nightmare on Elm Street where the danger really only feels tangible at night. But with unlikable characters determined to make the oft-parodied horror film sin of making dumb decisions, this film loses interest fast and doesn’t make up enough ground to recover fully.

          One thing I quickly want to give credit for is not making the villain totally supernatural. They try to explain some science to justify the “demon’s” appearance, which is laughable, but it’s nice that this isn’t simply some evil being that toys with the important characters until the final twenty minutes of the film. I won’t give more away about the backstory, but it’s not anything all too interesting ultimately.

          Produced by horror moneymaker James Wan, this film starts off with the stepdad of the main characters being -surprise- killed by our dark demon. Yes, we learn that he was trying to research how to help the mother (played by Maria Bello), but the stepdad starts the trend of bad decisions, so his death doesn’t affect us much. The biggest star here is the older sister played by Teresa Palmer, and while she redeems herself somewhat later on, she starts off super cliched and unlikable—but at least her boyfriend is consistent throughout.

          Outside of a decent action scene where the demon comes in and out against the backdrop of a flashing neon sign, this film is extremely dull early on. The gist is that the younger brother starts seeing the demon and can’t get much sleep, and this causes friction between the sister and the mother. The mystery of the demon isn’t compelling, and since there’s only the core group of characters to deal with, the stakes don’t feel very high for the middle chunk of the film.

          There’s some cool shots that can mostly be seen from the trailer, but there’s not much outside of that. The climax is a pretty entertaining ride; however, two cops come to help out and my goodness. It’s the most frustrated I’ve been with movie characters in quite some time. The characters are yelling to the cops all kind of useful information like telling them to use their flashlights, and the cops completely ignore them, don’t say a word, and blindly head into the dark for easy kills. Like, okay, the film needed a boost in death count, but these movie cops are some of the absolute worst.

          Don’t Breathe isn’t the best horror film out there, but there’s a reason why it was more talked about. Lights Out still made great money off its modest budget and PG-13 rating, but that also brings about the point that it’s tame in many regards. You can still be atmospheric and creepy like Insidious or go all-in on the jump scares like The Woman in Black, but Lights Out doesn’t really embrace much at all. It’s not all clichés, but the parts that are clichés are frustrating and close to unforgivable. If you want some scary fun, the best movie that comes to mind of recent memory is Crawl.

 

In Brief:

• I’ll withhold my thoughts on Birds of Prey for now in case I do a review, but what you need to know here is that it ain’t that good. And I was rooting for it to be good.
• Richard Jewell is well-acted, Kathy Bates in particular, but it also just doesn’t have quite enough story to stay compelling all the way through. But this talkie was pretty good.
• The Way Back is really good and that much more compelling knowing Ben Affleck’s personal connection with the story. This has basketball, but this is a movie about addiction and recovery.
• I watched Side Effects from way back and have very mixed feelings over it. I think it goes one twist too far, but Rooney Mara is great.
• Jojo Rabbit has some funny moments, but they’re much fewer and far between than I would expect from a Taika Waititi film. But very reminiscent of Moonrise Kingdom.