It’s no surprise that Sophie’s sleepover buddy Diana is the same creature that offed her husband and this light-averse ghost plans to get rid of Rebecca, Martin and anyone else who threatens her relationship with Sophie. If that didn’t tip you off that she’s got some issues, she doesn’t even let her adoring long-term boyfriend Bret (Alexander DiPersia) stay overnight. Rebecca meanwhile lives alone in an apartment that wouldn’t look out of place in a Papa Roach video, decked out in Avenged Sevenfold posters and as many stylised skulls as you can think of. Sophie has a history of mental health problems and retreats into her room after the death of her husband, spending most nights having hushed conversations in darkened rooms with her ‘imaginary’ friend Diana, which terrifies Martin. The meat of the film then focuses on this man’s family: wife Sophie (Maria Bello), young son Martin (Gabriel Bateman) and step daughter Rebecca (Teresa Palmer).
An opening scene establishes this shady figure as she terrorises a factory manager (Billy Burke), darting from one shadow to another and pouncing when the lights go out. The film exploits that with a villain who exclusively resides in darkness, disappearing as soon as the lights are on. We’ve all been freaked out by the prospects of what might be lurking in the dark or even sworn we’ve seen something moving through the shadows. It was three minutes of watch-through-your-hands tension but what happens when you take that idea and try to stretch it out to feature length? Well Sandberg has done just that and the result is a flimsy studio horror that entertains but fails to match the simple scares of the short.Īs in the short, Lights Out is built almost entirely on one of the most common, primal phobias that humans experience: a fear of the dark.
Sandberg’s 2013 short Lights Out was a deliciously terrifying idea, brilliantly executed: a woman, alone in her apartment, is haunted by a ghostly figure that only appears when the lights are off.
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