I wonder if we’ll ever, as a species, get over our collective fear of the dark. It’s so easy to imagine all the early human beings huddled together in the night, not yet fully grasping the concept of fire, and peering off into the pitchy wilderness. will a predator would come for them in the middle of the night? Was that sound a gust of wind tickling through the brush? Or has a beast with sharp claws finally come for you, as you knew it always would…?
If the new supernatural horror movie Lights Out has one great quality it’s that it embraces our simple, shuddering phobia of shadows. The film, directed by David F. Sandberg, was based on a highly effective horror short about a woman haunted by a demon, one that disappears when you shine a light on it. It’s an easy concept to grasp but an unusual one to visualize: how do you film a creature that, quite by definition, cannot be seen?
Sandberg seems to know the answer. The monster in Lights Out is often heard, scratching just out of frame, but only witnessed in silhouette or – even more effectively – with a certain degree of deniability. Just like a coat hanging on the side of a chair can look suspiciously like a maniac about to pounce on your bed, so too does the monster in Lights Out seem to trick us. Except she really is about to pounce, isn’t she?
Warner Bros.
In adapting his short film to the big screen David F. Sandberg has had to elaborate an awful lot on the premise and his characters. He’s got the right idea at least. Lights Out connects its central image – an insidious demon, but one that’s difficult to describe or examine – to an underlying theme of mental illness. The protagonist of Lights Out, played by Teresa Palmer, is a young woman whose mother (Maria Bello) suffers from severe depression, and seemingly from hallucinations. Although our heroine has grown up and moved on with her life, her mother still suffers, and her little brother (Gabriel Bateman) suffers with her.
The monster, Diana, is a literal manifestation of the mother’s mental illness, and it’s living with this family whether they like it or not (and at least one of them seems to like it). It’s a concept that has been brought to the screen before – in films that range from Forbidden Planet to The Babadook – and it’s going to remain a potent one for many years to come. Mental illness, in its various forms, is real and harrowing but hard to describe, and hard to even talk about a lot of the time. And the anxieties that emerge from living with these conditions – or just being related to somebody who lives with them – can be consuming and painful.
Warner Bros.
So we have a heroine who ran away from her problems, and has to learn to confront them head on. We have a child who suffers along with his mother. We have a story about a rough subject, visualized in a striking and horrifying way. And unfortunately we have an ending that doesn’t quite work. Without completely spoiling this otherwise strong movie, the solution to the problem – that is to say, the only way to stop the monster – makes sense from a mechanical perspective. Yes, indeed, doing this thing would slay that beast, but it just doesn’t do the audience much good as an allegory. The specter might be gone but the specter of mental illness will remain, and so the lesson we must ultimately take from Lights Out is… unhealthy, to say the least. If not by design then at least in execution.
It’s a such a creepy thriller – with fine performances by the entire cast – that it’s hard to say whether the whole thing comes crashing down just because the ending is kinda “iffy.” If your investment is in the supernatural element of Lights Out, you may love this spooky new attempt to introduce audiences to an unusual new horror villain. But if you get too involved in the personal struggles of these characters, and if you connect too deeply to them in real life, you may find that Lights Out fumbles before the credits roll, and it may be hard to forgive the film for that clumsiness.
Regardless of your takeaway, Lights Out is an impressive theatrical debut from David F. Sandberg, who keeps the audience in the palm of his hand throughout the movie. For a long time it’s a “Don’t go in there” film of the highest calibre. Sadly, it turns into a “Don’t go there” film by the end.
(Correction: This review originally credited actress Teresa Palmer as “Teresa Wright,” the star of Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. We apologize for the error. We had shadows on the brain.)
Top Photo: Warner Bros.
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved, Rapid Reviews and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
