Lights Out

SPOILER-FREE MOVIE REVIEW

Man, that was some freaky-ass shit.

Lights Out is a horror movie about this really messed-up family whose mother dealt with some demons in her youth when she was in the mental hospital. Many years on after some truly crazy events, this demon by the name of Diana comes back to haunt the children.

This being my third horror movie I’ve seen, I wasn’t expecting too much - just the typical and generic stuff we’ve all come to expect from the typical horror picture.

Also, I have been spoiled because the previous two horror films I’ve seen were the two Conjuring movies which were pretty good, especially The Conjuring 2 which I reviewed earlier this year.
(Link: http://themoviefella.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/the-conjuring-2.html)

The premise of Lights Out was interesting enough, and I was already freaked out by the trailers so I was truly keen on checking this movie out. Thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed.

Lights Out delivered an interesting, family-centred and heartfelt story where you get to see the ‘innocent’ members of that aforementioned messed-up family stand together in fighting Diana the Demon.

I liked the chemistry between the two main protagonists, siblings Martin (Gabriel Bateman) and Rebecca (Teresa Palmer). It was a very believable and warm relationship and they truly encapsulated the brother-sister dynamic very well.

I think Teresa Palmer's a pretty good actress too, and plus, she's really pretty. I thought the kid was good as well.

There was also a very interesting character in Rebecca’s boyfriend Bret (Alexander DiPersia), who was actually useful and not the ‘sacrificial lamb’.

The only character other than Diana (cos she was so damn freaky) was that of the mother Sophie (Maria Bello).

Sure, she played some crazy woman but seriously though, some of the things she did and some of the decisions she made were so incredibly stupid that even a crazier person would have made better choices.

This was a mother for heaven's sake. What kind of a mother would want their children to meet your demon friend? It was madness. Best part is that Child Services still deemed her fit to raise young Martin.

Weird characters aside, it was a pretty efficient movie.

It gets to the point really quickly and doesn't beat around the bush at all, making for a quick and concise horror film which delivers all that you'd expect within a very short 1 hour and 21 minutes (relief for me that it wasn't a long movie).

The manner in which they handled the scary bits was really good as well.

Instead of a slow build-up to a set of scares like you got in the Conjuring movies, the kind of scares you get here are like a never-ending onslaught of jump-scares right throughout the third act of the movie, with the first two acts containing mild scares here and there.

All them jump scares in the third act felt like a self-reloading machine gun on infinite ammo - just a never-ending tirade of scary bits which kept my hand covering my face most of the time.

Mind you, these weren't 'cheap' scares either.

These weren't jump scares placed there just for the sake of them being there. Each scare had reason to exist, and I appreciate that.

It wasn't some cheap horror movie which is hellbent on scaring the shit out of you, but instead, it wanted to tell a story as to why this and that happened.

All in all, Lights Out was a decent attempt at adding some fresh blood into the horror genre.

However, it does fall back upon some genre clichés and sadly ends up feeling like a movie that we've all seen some time before.

The cast delivers good performances but other than that, the jump scares alone weren't enough to make it groundbreaking.

Let's hope the other horror film 'Don't Breathe' which I'm very keen on watching will be better.

5.5/10.