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Lights Out (2016)
When it comes to horror movies I personally prefer more psychological scares/thrills rather than movies that just constantly try to get a cheap jump scare out of you. I thought "The Ring" was pretty ok but after that came a string of poorly done (mostly remakes of asian films) PG-13 Horror films that all had similar stories and similar cliches. For a while we saw a decrease in these types of movies, but recently they have made a comeback and "Lights Out" is one of the newest releases in the "Jump Scare-athon" Genre. Surprisingly though this film actually does do some things very well and managed to exceed my expectations (they weren't really all that high though).
I was a big fan of the opening scene, it is spoiled a bit by the trailer but it still did a good job of packing a pretty brutal punch for a PG-13 movie and getting me immediately interested in the movie. From there the pace continues to move very quickly, they do not hold back from showing the Shadow'd baddie multiple times in the first fifteen minutes. The fact that they showed her so often early on did make her less scary but it also made the movie much more entertaining in my opinion. As the story began to unfold I was actually fairly pleased with it, it's not a extremely original story but it does have more depth than stories in these kinds of movies usually do.
Then we are introduced to the movie's first big problem, the main character Rebecca (played by Teresa Palmer), she is just so bland and mono toned through out the whole film. Just about every other character in the film is more interesting than her yet she gets the majority of the screen time/lines. Usually in these kinds of movies it's the young child actors who ruin it but honestly I thought the character Martin (played by Gabriel Bateman) was actually done pretty well and succeeded in not being too obnoxious or annoying. The kooky mom (Maria Bello) and the picture perfect boyfriend (Alexander Dipersia) were so-so characters, didn't really add much to the film but also didn't really take anything away from it.
Aside from a super bland main character another big problem that the film had was it's pacing. As I mentioned above it does pace itself very well in the beginning, unfortunately from there we are treated to some very long, drawn out, uninteresting scenes that felt unnecessary. The first fifteen minutes are good and the last fifteen minutes are great, however in the in-between was a bit lackluster. The movie is at it's best when Danielle (Shadow'd baddie) is going after people and wreaking havoc, however instead of making those scenes the key points of the film we instead have to sit through a lot of meh jump scares and shotty attempts at character development. Had there been more victims for Danielle to go after I think the film would have been much better, an R rating wouldn't have hurt either.
All in all it's really not a bad film for what it is, it does stand out from the other jump scare movies by having some very well done scenes, a pretty ok story, and a few brutal moments for a PG-13 film. But was definitely held back by it's rating, the lackluster small cast, and too many boring scenes.
When it comes to horror movies I personally prefer more psychological scares/thrills rather than movies that just constantly try to get a cheap jump scare out of you. I thought "The Ring" was pretty ok but after that came a string of poorly done (mostly remakes of asian films) PG-13 Horror films that all had similar stories and similar cliches. For a while we saw a decrease in these types of movies, but recently they have made a comeback and "Lights Out" is one of the newest releases in the "Jump Scare-athon" Genre. Surprisingly though this film actually does do some things very well and managed to exceed my expectations (they weren't really all that high though).
I was a big fan of the opening scene, it is spoiled a bit by the trailer but it still did a good job of packing a pretty brutal punch for a PG-13 movie and getting me immediately interested in the movie. From there the pace continues to move very quickly, they do not hold back from showing the Shadow'd baddie multiple times in the first fifteen minutes. The fact that they showed her so often early on did make her less scary but it also made the movie much more entertaining in my opinion. As the story began to unfold I was actually fairly pleased with it, it's not a extremely original story but it does have more depth than stories in these kinds of movies usually do.
Then we are introduced to the movie's first big problem, the main character Rebecca (played by Teresa Palmer), she is just so bland and mono toned through out the whole film. Just about every other character in the film is more interesting than her yet she gets the majority of the screen time/lines. Usually in these kinds of movies it's the young child actors who ruin it but honestly I thought the character Martin (played by Gabriel Bateman) was actually done pretty well and succeeded in not being too obnoxious or annoying. The kooky mom (Maria Bello) and the picture perfect boyfriend (Alexander Dipersia) were so-so characters, didn't really add much to the film but also didn't really take anything away from it.
Aside from a super bland main character another big problem that the film had was it's pacing. As I mentioned above it does pace itself very well in the beginning, unfortunately from there we are treated to some very long, drawn out, uninteresting scenes that felt unnecessary. The first fifteen minutes are good and the last fifteen minutes are great, however in the in-between was a bit lackluster. The movie is at it's best when Danielle (Shadow'd baddie) is going after people and wreaking havoc, however instead of making those scenes the key points of the film we instead have to sit through a lot of meh jump scares and shotty attempts at character development. Had there been more victims for Danielle to go after I think the film would have been much better, an R rating wouldn't have hurt either.
All in all it's really not a bad film for what it is, it does stand out from the other jump scare movies by having some very well done scenes, a pretty ok story, and a few brutal moments for a PG-13 film. But was definitely held back by it's rating, the lackluster small cast, and too many boring scenes.