Cast: Teresa Palmer, Gabriel Bateman, Maria Bello, Alexander DiPersia
Director: David Sandberg
Building on the fears that emerge from darkness, Lights Out, takes you on a weird journey. It introduces us to a new kind of ghost, one that lurks in the dark corners, and does not wait for the night to strike. It’s always lurking in shadows, behind closed doors, in the basements and under the beds. A ghost that is not very elaborate, scarcely visible and confused in its manifestation. The confusion could be due to the need to impress upon the viewers or simply because one needs a shape, an identity to make the horror real. Lights Out is interesting in bits, scary as hell and has a lot of implied storytelling going on. Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) seems on the verge of a breakdown, terrified of her childhood memories and her father leaving them, she lives alone.
Her stepbrother Martin (Gabriel Bateman) begins to have similar troubles at home, and that’s when Rebecca has to step in the house again. The revelation in the story is where the ghost turns out to be connected to the mother, Sohpie (Maria Bello). Sophie has a history of mental disorders, acute depression and delusional behaviour, and she had made friends with a curious person in the mental asylum. This is where the whole plot had an opportunity to become truly sinister, but it didn’t.
David Sandberg, who is also the writer of the book by the same title, may have been a little off the mark with the visual medium as opposed to the text. With a book, the reader has the freedom to imagine the shape and identity of the horror, but the visual medium might have compelled him to give the horror a face thereby, diluting the shot, and making the whole thing much less scary. His excellence lies in the succinctness of the visual narrative, where he manages to squeeze in such an intense drama in a mere 82 minute, his background with the short-film format could be the reason for his succinctness. It might be a good idea to look for his short film Attic Panic at this point.
The point of contention is the manner in which the issue of mental disorder is tackled in the film. The manifestation of the ghost could very well be the delusional other of the mother’s character, and symbolically it might make sense to end the film in that manner, but by differentiating the ghost from the person, and then resolving to an easy exit is the problem. If the movie stretched out a little more, perhaps it could have wandered towards finding another solution to end the haunting.
The performances are just fine, with Teresa Palmer taking the cherry and Gabriel Bateman stealing the cake. There isn’t much for anyone else, and the ghost is barely visible since it is always in the darkness. It also borders on vampire characteristics, when briefly the ghost is exposed to light and the skin starts to burn and peel off. There is a momentary confusion about the true nature of the ghost. She sits in the dark corners of the house, scratching the floors and the walls, doing enough to express her obsession with Maria Bello’s character.
It brings a good share of terror for the viewer, and if you were to detach yourself from the implications of the fate of a mental patient, you would definitely experience the horror that can send chills down inside, and make you suspicious of the dark corners, the fused bulbs and you might actually develop a liking for the humble torch that does get left out in this age of smart lighting.
The writer is founder, Lightcube Film Society
