Lights Out, starring Teresa Palmer and Gabriel Bateman is about a torn family that faces a monster that's only dangerous when the...well you can guess when.
This stereotypical horror has all the elements of every other horror and by that I mean JUMP SCARE CENTRAL. Most movies have two constants that they live on: The first thing is they have a sequence like 'no scare scene, no scare scene, JUMP SCARE. No scare scene, n scare scene, JUMP SCARE.' And they follow these throughout the movie or sometimes series. The other thing they do is create their own rules (which I refer to as a the movie's universe)
Getting back to this movie, I'm gonna review this movie with no spoilers and start with the bad stuff about it.
The bad: The story line was average at best and the acting by most of the supporting cast was pretty terrible. The boyfriend, known as 'boyfriend' basically, was barely there besides a few moments where he was not unfunny, but not quite funny. They may have suffered from the story being so weak as there wasn't much to really work for. Eric Heisserer and David F. Sanberg were the writing staff on this horror and they made sure to hit every mark while not really pushing any barriers or risk not making the quintessential 'horror'
The good: Teresa Palmer and Gabriel Bateman were convincing and entertaining (not necessarily good actors but entertaining can be good,..here it counts as good) The strong female lead is usually portrayed in an awful and annoying way, Teresa Palmer did a great job of being strong without needing to put men down. She did have a back story that caused her to push her character's counter part, played by Alexander DiPersia. And another big positive is this film gets fans to that eerie, cringey feeling and nearly pushes us over that freaked out edge multiple times very quickly. While they filled this movie with their needed jump scares on their marks, they did create that uneasy fear feeling that many similar movies try for but fail miserably (Ouija, Annabelle, Krampus and Mama just to name a few recent ones)
So in seeing this feature, I went into it ready for absolute garbage and was pleasantly surprised to say it wasn't complete fiery trash. Out of 22, I give this a ten. I would say if you are a die hard horror fan who loves anything that gives you a jump and contains very little gore, then you should find a discounted showtime, like I did, and go see it. If however, you want a movie with substance or great acting/writing I would have to advise you to continue to wait for James Wan to do more than produce...sit this one out.
Thanks for reading and make sure you don't turn the...
...lights out.
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