We soon meet Rebecca (Teresa Palmer), who finds what can only be described as an ‘exposition box’ and discovers that her mother Sophie (Maria Bello) is being haunted by a ghost called Diana (the Daily Express won’t like that) – once Sophie’s friend with a light-sensitive skin condition, now a light-sensitive demon not all that scary when there are electric lights everywhere… they should probably have set it somewhere dark, like the countryside or the past.Īlthough directed by Sandberg, this glossy production-liner has James Wan’s grubby fingerprints all over it: noisy jump scares, CG demons and a story so thin it could be told in three minutes – and originally it was, until Wan turned Sandberg’s playful short into another tepid haunted house movie. Lights Out opens in a mannequin warehouse, for no reason other than it’s a horror movie. Sandberg made a terrifying short film (below) with zero scope for expansion. The highlight for me was probably the random out-of-nowhere flashback establishing Rebecca as a '90s kid with a movie poster of Macaulay Culkin's Richie Rich on her wall. Too routine and minor to generate any feelings of disappointment, Lights Out takes its concept as far as it can, while feeling overstretched even at just 81 minutes including credits. This young Edgar Ramírez doppelganger probably stands to benefit the most from this movie being seen and appreciated. As the boyfriend Rebecca is reluctant to label as such, Alexander DiPersia is the closest thing the film has to a scene stealer. It nonetheless provoked nervous laughter and some cathartic snark from the engaged crowd at my packed screening.Īm I mistaken in thinking that Maria Bello was once a respected actress? Palmer has turned 30 without making that leap to stardom, though she continues to enjoy prominent steady work. There's very little intelligence and sophistication to this, a movie that opens with a shot of a streetlight. How many different ways can you have light going out and Diana appearing? The movie concocts as many scenarios as it can: dead lightbulbs, candles, flashlights, cell phones, black light, a fire, and, of course, a climactic power outage. Lights Out unfolds as a parade of jump scares built around the notion that the dark can be terrifying. Child services frowns upon that arrangement and the relocation does not prevent that shadowy figure, who we come to know as a storied ghost named Diana, from haunting Sophie's children. Martin's older sister, independent commitment phobe Rebecca (Teresa Palmer, with an American accent that comes and goes), takes the boy out of their mother's home to crash at her child-unfriendly apartment. It is a consoling otherworldly presence for the manic depressive Sophie and the stuff of nightmares for Martin, who can't sleep at home and keeps dozing off at school to the concern and intervention of child services. Paul doesn't make it home or past the opening scene, but that shadowy figure does. But something is strange at the workplace: a shadowy figure appears when the lights are off and disappears when they come on. Paul (Billy Burke), some kind of executive of a garment company, has an hour of work left before coming home to his sick wife Sophie (Maria Bello) and their son Martin (Gabriel Bateman). The film establishes its premise quickly and effectively in a prologue that largely served as its teaser trailer. Sandberg, whose 3-minute 2013 short film of the same name is adapted by The Thing remaker and A Nightmare on Elm Street rebooter Eric Heisserer. Lights Out is the feature debut of director David F. Wan, whose second Conjuring movie is still generating plenty of profit despite an immodest for him $40 M price tag, is a producer on Lights Out, a horror film whose meager $5 million budget guarantees it commercial success. But there will always be a place in his heart and his schedule for economical horror, which describes most of his films, including Saw, The budgets may be rising for James Wan, who was at the helm of Furious 7, a sequel that cost nearly $200 million to make and grossed $1.5 billion worldwide.