Lights Out
A few months ago while watching YouTube videos an advertisement for an upcoming horror film came on. While watching this trailer I had a feeling I'd seen this before and then the title of the film came on and I realized it was based on a short film I'd seen on YouTube a few years ago. I thought that it was really awesome that someones short film that was uploaded to the internet garnered enough attention to be able to make a full length feature. I thought the short film was fairly well-made and did stick with me for a while. I have to say though, this might be one of the most forgettable films I've seen all year.
First let's start out with some of the positives because there are a few. The concept of how this ghost works is kinda creative and does produce a couple of awesome horror moments. The performances in the movie were all very serviceable as well; not great or terrible but very moderate. The film, while short, also had good pacing to it. It never dragged and the film never really lost focus. The last thing I want to mention is the ending was actually surprising. I was not blown away by the end but I did respect the guts it had to go there.
Now let's discuss the flaws this film had that really pulled me out of the experience. The concept of the ghost, while imaginative and cool, was wasted numerous times in the movie. Instead of using it correctly and delivering genuine scares it opts out and chooses to be very generic horror. Also some of the logic and the rules of the ghost were unclear as well. It seemed the script really bended some of the rules a lot to further the story. The characters were also very bland as well and you never really felt attached to any of them. The screenplay really limited the audiences ability to care about anyone and due to this, the ending didn't carry as much weight as it could have.
By far my biggest flaws with the film were how predictable and generic it was. It was very frustrating to watch at times because the film had so much potential to be way more terrifying than it turned out. The concept of this film was so cool and the way the ghost worked could've made for a much more gratifying experience. There were times when the movie set up a scare that might have been much more effective but it chose to cheapen the film by just going for standard boring jump scare that did not scare me at all. Even some of the sound design in the movie was very well done but it was in service of such a mediocre movie.
While I do respect this film for some of it's elements, I ultimately left the theater very disappointed. I also understand that this is this directors first feature, but his short films are crafted pretty well that I wonder were the talent went for this movie. It's a horror film that had potential but never scared me once and is honestly quite forgettable.
4/10
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