Simultaneously, such tedium and pointless circle running creates a punishingly slow pace. Alongside these detracting details, we realize more than ever before, how little narrative Heisserer’s dismal script actually delivers. In much the same vein, the visual effects, credited to seven individuals, are your usual sub-par, computer generated shtick. Likewise, the cringe-worthy dialogue is that of a Lifetime Movie of the Week brought to the big screen. During this time, the terror elements are, sadly, sparse. What is worse is that all of these aforesaid instances come off more as filler than an honest attempt to get its spectators to care for our young hero and elder heroine. It doesn’t even operate satisfyingly enough as pure, mindless entertainment. Yet, it misses nearly every opportunity it has to be anything more than a one-dimensional, strictly on the surface thriller. It’s a simple, accustomed, but not entirely unattractive, premise. From herein, the strange noises and unnerving scratching Martin has been hearing suddenly becomes much more. It is at this point Diana makes her presence increasingly known in Martin and Rebecca’s life. After a call from a school nurse who could not reach Sophie (who is not taking her medication and becoming increasingly obsessed with Diana), Rebecca reluctantly takes Martin to her home to catch some much needed sleep. This is with Martin falling asleep at school arriving as a telltale sign of the youth’s restless nights avoiding the nightmarish whims of Diana. In this portion, we learn that Martin is finding himself in the tormented footsteps Rebecca endured years prior. This is even as its first two acts pile on scene after scene of exposition and tired, predictable character development. These two are the anchor that helps keep the movie afloat. It is one which makes it all too easy to see them as a pair of semi-distant relatives who are forced to rely on another unexpectedly for survival. Palmer and Bateman share a palpable chemistry. She is a stepsister to the mentally ill Sophie (in a presentation by Maria Bello that is undoubtedly skillful and gripping) and Sophie’s son, Martin (a well-done representation by Gabriel Bateman that is constrained by the commonality of Heisserer’s dim depictions). This is especially true of Teresa Palmer’s portrayal of Rebecca. Luckily, they are somewhat elevated by solid performances. The personalities we encounter are all cardboard archetypes. Instead, Diana and those she haunts are given garden variety backstory and motivations. At the least, the team could’ve indulged in more innovative plot elements along with a meatier account. Perhaps this aforementioned criticism wouldn’t be so painfully noticeable if Sandberg and writer Eric Heisserer were able to give us more of an original fiction. Such is especially guffaw-inducing when we recognize that most people would’ve turned the lights back on once and fled immediately to safety the first time around. Instead, we laugh at the absurd amount of times it takes Losten to discern if what she is seeing is real or not. ![]() In one of the first of many erroneous moves, we are not revolted by the ominous sight of Diana as Sandberg and company have obviously intended. This is while the above-articulated fear tactic, wrong-headedly exposed in the movie’s trailer, flashes again and again before our eyes. Unsure if she is seeing something from the door a mere room away, she hits the light switch repeatedly. In this extended bit, Esther (in a fair turn from Lotta Losten the star of the short this is based on) is about to leave her job at a factory late at night. It also becomes all the more ridiculous in moments like the eye-rolling preface of this all too safe exertion. This is true even with the less cinematically experienced, teenage audiences this dull, pedestrian, PG-13 rated affair is obviously catering to. Yet, as for an obviously pushed beyond its boundaries eighty-one minute motion picture, with a reported budget of $4.9 million, much more needs to be offered to satisfy the increasingly ravenous pallets of the average genre fanatic. Such is a fairly interesting notion for the Sandberg penned medium Diana first appeared in. She all too gradually appears closer to her next victim every time the lights go out and disappears as soon as they come back on. This is via a dark, ethereal figure dubbed Diana (Alicia Vela-Bailey in a limited and ineffectual enactment). The Atomic Monster, New Line Cinema and Grey Matter Productions release possesses a single item, a laughably redundant jump scare, in its fright arsenal. Sandberg, is a cheap, cloying horror gimmick posing as a full length feature. ![]() Lights Out (2016), based on the near three minute 2013 short film of the same name from director David F.
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