Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Lights Out (2016)

Internet has become a new platform to present ideas and arts, especially for filmmakers. Lights Out was originally a short film back in 2013. The concept is great and pretty scary if you ask me. It was directed by David F. Sandberg. The short is only less than 3 minutes; it starred the director’s own wife, Lotta Losten. Sandberg and his wife had to move to Hollywood in order to get the interest of investors and the time to get this movie in production. They were really strugling. Another interesting fact that Sandberg had never been in a film set before; he had to ask his first assistant when to say “Action.”

According to Wikipedia, the budget was only about $5 million and made 20 times more than that.

Movie critics like to embrace smart-simple things. This film proved to be one of it. This film is like James Wan’s low-budget horror-thriller film; shot indoors – not in public places; few cast and only revolves around a family problem; cheap but effective effects with some fancy jump scares. It had a simple story pattern and still felt fresh. Although it wasn’t as good as Wan’s.

But all and all, I didn’t really enjoy it, I like the short film better than the feature film. The short film only embraced the idea. The idea evolved into a feature length movie, which wasn’t a good thing. The story didn’t live up well beside the idea. The story made the special idea into an ordinary idea.

The verdict:


A simple horror movie, but didn’t evolved well from its original creation.

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