Film Review: "Lights Out" (2016).

"You were right to be afraid of the dark" with Lights Out. This supernatural horror film directed by David F. Sandberg, in his directorial debut, written by Eric Heisserer, and based on Sandberg's 2013 short film of the same title. The film follows Rebecca and her boyfriend who try to investigate the connection between her mother and her imaginary friend, Diana, after her stepfather is murdered by a supernatural entity.

Sandberg, and his wife Lotta Losten, created the initial short film for a film competition. Although the film did not win the competition, the short soon went viral, leading to Sandberg to be contacted by several agents, to the point where he had to develop a spreadsheet to keep track of them all. One of the contacts was Lawrence Grey who wanted to collaborate with James Wan in order to produce a feature-length version. Although Wan enjoyed the short, he was hesitant that it could be turned into a feature until Sandberg produced a treatment for the feature-length version. By June 2015, Teresa Palmer, Maria Bello, Gabriel Bateman, Billy Burke, Alexander DiPersia, Lotta Losten, and Alicia Vela-Bailey were cast. At the same time, principal photography commenced, and wrapped in early August. Filming took place in Los Angeles. Sandberg aimed to use as much authentic lighting for the film as possible. Some scenes were only lit by candle lights or fluorescent tubes. Sandberg said that his goal was to keep Diana's appearance in the film as a silhouette. In addition, he decided to focus on practical effects and avoided as much CGI as possible. Diana was created with a photorealistic prosthetic suit that could also function as a green screen suit so as to remove her from the scene when the lights came on. The cast were not shown Diana until filming, in completely dark sets. This was an intentional directorial choice so as to provoke a genuine reaction of fear when first seeing Diana. Vela-Bailey was previously Palmer's stunt double on I Am Number Four (2011), it would have ruined the effect had she seen her prior as she would have recognized her therefore losing the authentic expression of fear. Diana was originally supposed to be more of a demonic presence, but Wan suggested that she have a human background so she could have a relationship to Sophie and add to the connection to the family. Sandberg personally handled several VFX shots himself during post-production with the studio's permission. The film was pushed from a winter to a summer release following positive audience reaction from test screenings.

It stars Palmer, Bello, Bateman, Burke, DiPersia, Losten, and Vela-Bailey. At times, there was no chemistry between the cast, especially Palmer and DiPersia, and thus watching the film was a tedious task on it's own.

So while Lights Out expertly delivers all the bumps in the night that fans of this genre love, it is also haunted by its own paradoxical narratology, engendering something slyly manipulative and deeply irrational.

Simon says Lights Out receives: