 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Lights Out • Year: 2016 • Country: USA • Director: David F. Sandberg • Main cast: Teresa Palmer, Gabriel Bateman, Maria Bello • Runtime: 81 minutes • Production company: New Line Cinema, Grey Matter Productions, Atomic Monster • TRAILER |
Lights Out (2013) was a 3 minutes swedish short film written and directed by David F. Sandberg that had some repercusions in the festivals circuit a few years ago. Eventually ended up in the hands of James Wan and soon later became a long lenght film project.
Lights Out, the long length film, is an adaptation of the main idea of the original short film. A weird little woman, dead in strange circumstances, is somehow back to reality through her only friend, already a mature woman. Then her children, an independent young woman, and a little boy, will have to fight the evil spirit if they want to get their mother back.
Leaving the short film apart, the idea of Lights Out is not the most original one, but still could have potential. Based on the short film concept, the duties to write the script for the full length were assigned to Eric Heisserer, one of the hype screenwriters for Hollywood horror and fantasy films nowadays. His are the texts for Final Destination 5 (2011), Arrival (2016) and the remakes A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) and The Thing (2011). But this time the resulting product doesn’t reach expectations.
A lame script, together with a boring direction by David F. Sandberg as his full film debut, make Lights Out to be a full of cliches and very predictable work. One thing they achieved is to create a good handful of frights, that’s for sure, but in a very unoriginal way. The thrilling tension created in the introduction of the film soon vanishes away as the running time goes, until all hopes for an entertaining piece dissapear.
But not everything is bad news here. The female lead star duo really works. Maria Bello shows she is a very versatile acress and can do the transition between femme fatale to a lunatic mother with lots of dignity. And autralian born Teresa Palmer proved once again that she is not only a pretty face and can delivery a good intense performance. She did it recently in titles like Triple 9 (2016) and she will do it again.
If you like easy frights and you just wanna grab hard the person sitting next to you, try this movie out. But if you expect something else, some substance in a film, a good story and some surprises, I would honestly skip it.
RATE: 3,5/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4786282
