Based on director David Sandberg’s short film of the same name, Lights Out enters the search for original horror with a very simple but original visual idea of a shadowy figure that only appears when the lights are out or dimmed. The lights go on and the figure disappears. It sounds simple and not particularly scary on paper, but if you’ve seen the trailer for the movie, you might have an inkling of how this can be used to freak out even the staunchest horror buff. We’re introduced to this idea as the film opens at a textile warehouse late at night where a worker doing inventory first spots something in the shadows that disappears when she turns on the lights. A few minutes later, her boss is talking to his son via Facetime before he goes into the warehouse and is killed by this same figure. We next meet Teresa Palmer’s Rebecca, a young woman with personal issues who is trying to figure out her relationship with Bret (Alexander DiPersia)—he wants to get more serious, but she’s not even ready for him to move in. Rebecca is actually the older sister of Martin (Gabriel Bateman), the boy we saw earlier Facetiming with his now dead stepfather. Martin called his estranged sister, because their mutual mother Sophie (Maria Bello) has been behaving oddly, having suffered from depression years earlier, a condition that’s returned with the death of her second husband. Rebecca tries to step in and care for Martin but Child Services sends him back with his mother. We soon learn that shadowy figure is what’s left of Diana, a childhood friend of their mother who suffered from a skin condition that wouldn’t allow her to be in light for any amount of time. There’s much more to Diana’s backstory and how she became this mysterious and murderous figure, but that seems better left for when you watch the film. Either way, Diana is a horror antagonist similar to Samara from The Ring and others, only with more of a personal connection to her victims. Lights Out might have been a complete disaster without such a strong cast, but Palmer in particular brings more to the character of Rebecca than a less skilled actress, making Rebecca infinitely likable, especially in her rapport with DiPersia. Bateman (previously in Annabelle) also does more to make Martin more interesting than most horror movie kids. The quality of the acting and writing puts the film on a level with last year’s It Follows where it feels there’s a strong vision at work behind the camera. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the movie is left in a place where the story is really over and it might be hard to find a way to do a sequel, but maybe that’s a good thing. We don’t need a sequel to every horror movie. Then again, for better or worse, all the best horror movies had sequels, with the exception maybe of Rosemary’s Baby, so if people really want to see more of Diana, they can probably figure out a way to bring her back. Lights Out opens nationwide on Friday, July 22.
title: “Lights Out Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-08-08” author: “Thomas Holmes”
Lights Out is a film that leaves a lasting impression. This is because it preys on our most primordial fears and one of the oldest questions in The Big Book Of Scary Things: what’s going on in the dark? Sanberg proves himself as an immense new talent here, on his first feature project. With Lights Out he uses several faculties of filmmaking available – framing, lighting, camera movements, story pacing, props, sound (one use of surround sound in the film is still rattling around my ears) – to create an unpredictable viewing experience, which veers skilfully between subtle atmospheric hair-raising and huge jump scares at pace. Lights Out ebbs and flows out of step with your expectations, delivering shocks when you weren’t anticipating them and moments of quiet just when you were ready to leap out of your skin. It’s a nerve-racking experience to say the least, which will have you flinching at every noise or movement from your fellow cinemagoers. The basic set up is a fairly classic one. There’s a creepy house, a bickering family, and even a cocksure boyfriend character that every slasher villain going would queue up for. This isn’t quite a clichéd film, though, but rather one that toys with horror conventions in order to unsettle the audience. Lights Out has no interest in playing to a rulebook. Heisserer’s script takes these familiar elements and spins them in fresh ways. Again, though, to tell you exactly who does what and why certain characters surprised me would spoil the film altogether. Suffice it to say, there was one beat in the final third of the film that garnered a spontaneous round of applause at the press screening. And a couple of frames before that, gasps gave way to laughter in the space of a second. Also, the script and the direction are masterful enough to make that tiny group of flaws very easy to ignore. The prospect of Lights Out becoming a recurring franchise is very welcome, but Sandberg and Heisserer have a mountain to climb if they’re aiming to top this. One tip: maybe get a lift back from the cinema if you can. Streets lights really don’t offer enough coverage.
