Review – Lights Out

With horror master James Wan as a producer and a couple of great trailers, Lights Out looked like it could rival The Conjuring 2 as the horror movie of the summer.  But apparently when the lights go out in Lights Out, so do the scares, as this turns from potential scarefest to a boring mess.

Lights Out follows a family who is being terrorized by a demon who only appears in the dark and they must figure out a way to stop it before she destroys the entire family.

Lights Out is nearly scareless.  There are maybe two or three parts that gave me a slight jump in my seat, but for the most, it’s the usual, no-music-while-creeping-around-the-dark-basement kind of scares.  Pretty generic stuff for a semi-inventive film idea.

When I saw semi-inventive, I’m mostly talking about the haunting spirit.  It is a spirit I haven’t seen in a movie before, which was cool to see.  However, towards the end of the movie, when all the clues get solved about the identity of the spirit and the reasons for the spirit haunting the family, gets super rushed and ends in a really unsettling, shocking way that will shock you.  I kind of dug, but not to the affect I wish it had one me.

Lights Out isn’t a great movie not because it lacks scares, but because it offers nothing else.  Unlike good horror movies, like The Conjuring films and The Strangers, they have more than relentless scares.  They have compelling characters, a good story, and are cinematically well done.  Lights Out offers none of that.  The performances are very bland, save for Maria Bello, who hams it up just enough to be entertaining, but not campy, the character development is lackluster, and it isn’t directed particularly well-made either, with no visual flare or anything.  There’s just nothing appealing about this movie besides the scares, which is has little of.

Lights Out is not a good movie.  It has terrible characters, a mishandled villain, and no flash to it.  And, worst of all, it’s a horror movie with no scares.

MY RATING – 1.5/4

Did you see Lights Out?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter @kevflix or on Facebook at Kevflix.