Lights Out is the first classic jump scare of the bunch. It centers around a woman whose mother is mentally ill and followed by a companion who really does not like light. She has a younger brother who is much younger than she is who’s in danger and like a good older sister, she rides to the rescue.
Lights Out a solid scary story, although the demonization of mental illness was somewhat jarring, at least there was also representation on the side that’s pro everyone living through the night as well. All in all, it was all I want in a scary movie; scary without gore. Also, the sibling relationship and the fact that all the major players were women really worked for me. Would watch again.
Spoilery:
For FUCKING once, someone calls the cops in a horror story where there aren’t good reasons to stay away from the cops, the cops call for backup as soon as there’s reason to. Something that always bothers me about horror movies is that people do stupid things and/or act out of character to make plot happen. Lights Out doesn’t do that. Everyone from the very beginning does the smartest thing they could possibly do given the situation and their expectations of it. The fact that they still die is something that I really liked about this movie. And it’s also something that will get me into a frothing rage when talking about Prometheus, but that’s beside the point.
For me, this movie contained virtually no face-punching in the bad way and that automatically lifts it onto the possible re-watch list. The relationships between all the women – chaotic good, chaotic neutral and chaotic evil – are at the center of this story and that’s always nice to see, no matter how hard the people writing the IMDB summaries try to make it about the men. But just once, though, I’d like to see a healthy female friendship in a story that features action. Is that too much to ask?
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