12/16/2023 0 Comments Lights out short film reactionThe presence of the monster is completely attributable to her and Bello gives you a pretty interesting depiction of someone surrendering to their darker impulses as they allow themselves to slide into heavy depression. Teresa Palmer and Gabriel Bateman both prove themselves to be likable leads, and it’s clear they have a tortured relationship with their mother, played here by Maria Bello. Thankfully the cast aren’t your generic horror movie fodder. I was just on guard waiting for the next jump scare to happen and that really didn’t do it for me. The pacing of this film felt off to me, which surprised me because this is an incredibly short film (clocking in at only 81 minutes) and yet I didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time in constant paranoia. And yet I never found myself scared of the monster. So here’s an opportunity to use darkness, horror films’ greatest tool, to give you a monster that can attack from anywhere, anytime. You were constantly paranoid about every angle that your protagonist couldn’t see, and the random people in the background on the suspicion that they could be the monster. That film succeeded for me by presenting a monster that only the victim and their sexual partners can see, and presents itself to them in the form of a stranger or a close friend and relative before viciously (and sexually) destroying them. Now granted, I’ll give the filmmakers credit that they manage to create a foreboding atmosphere on such a limited budget, but it’s not really filling me with dread the way a movie like It Follows accomplishes. It just decides to spook you whenever it has a chance (which is roughly a third of this entire movie) particularly towards the end. It’s fine, it’s serviceable, but it’s not the kind of scary movie that really excites me. This really isn’t my cup of tea for horror. It’s creepy enough, and the monster’s twisted movements are scary on their own to be disturbing, but this only allows the monster to simply surprise you at every opportunity it gets. The first two minutes (very similar to the original short and featuring the same actress as the short) quickly plays out the film’s main hand in demonstrating forced perspective and usage of light to demonstrate the presence of this creature. The movie takes advantage of all these ideas, but my main criticism is that it’s a limited pool of ideas. Plus, a flashlight can only give you a limited source of light allowing the monster to come at you from a different perspective. You might think to keep the lights on, but if your home suffers a power outage, you could be in deep trouble. It can only harm you when it’s in darkness, but it’s invisible in light. Now the cool part is, that’s a fucking scary ghost. The monster in this movie lurks around in darkness, similar to the short film it’s based off of. Other side effects include scribbling your name on other people’s shit Together, they uncover the strange case of their mother’s friend, Diana, who suffers from creepy Japanese school-girl syndrome: fucking with people’s heads, hideous as all hell, and uncanny ability to not fucking die. Teresa Palmer’s character, Rebecca, is concerned by this news because its the same reason she left in the first place. She’s got a younger half-brother she’s close enough with in Gabriel Bateman as Martin who hasn’t been sleeping due to their mother talking to an imaginary friend…an imaginary friend that Martin can see in darkness. Such is the case with Lights Out.Īnyways, we got Teresa Palmer (who I swear looks like a Kristen Stewart clone…that can consistently act well) who’s been living alone away from her mother who suffered from depression and possible hallucinations after her father left them. So it’s not really a scary horror movie, it just startles you. But sometimes they reside in the eternally damned spot, competently well made but doesn’t do much for me because it uses nothing but jump scares. Horror movies can go one of two ways for me: being generic bullshit that I’ll forget about within a month or become a permanent fixture of creepiness in my mind.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |