Lights Out

You can't shine a light. We’ve probably never had a similarly intense and original scare in cinemas, and in today's horror competition, it's hard to imagine a more effective way to make the audience's return home through darkened streets as unpleasant as possible. It goes full speed ahead from the start and, without any unnecessary talk, we are served an intelligent horror plot spiced up with such a thick atmosphere and such a scary monster that I would grunt with joy if I didn't have my vocal cords clenched with nervousness. Plus the flawless escalation, thanks to which the evil doesn't stop scaring even towards the end, the reasonable runtime and of course the absolutely disarming beauty of Terasa Palmer, thanks to whom I didn't breathe even in the less tense scenes. Pointless to complain and whine, that's all we can ask for. (07/25/2016)

It’s a shame that this movie follows the genre template too closely, working with overused clichés, and has the runtime of a Leslie Nielsen comedy. And it’s too bad that the characters are underdeveloped. The monster Diane has much greater potential, as she is scarier than anything from James Wan’s masterpieces. The scenes with her escalate from continuous goose bumps to a very intense climax. (08/09/2016)

A horror that doesn't waste time exposing and building tension, which works quite well in the straightforward first third. The idea works, Sandberg tested it in a short, but here he exploits it beyond his means. In the second half you can feel it. Lights Out is unable to tighten, surprise or unfortunately really scare anyone. Formally solid work, but overall dim. (12/31/2016)

Already running out of funny ideas for how to describe these boogeyman in da house horror movies for a first date. At the very least, the darkness-addicted villain theme could have made for an interesting filmmaking challenge, where you could have played an action game with the protagonists with cones of light in the style of PC games like Alan Wake, which the lazy filmmakers probably didn't feel like doing, so they repeat the one trick of approaching evil in a flickering environment. It would have been cool to see how Buster Keaton would have handled a similar plot. (11/09/2016)

I can’t ask more from mainstream horror. A very simple plot that doesn’t waste much time and goes straight to what matters, scaring. The idea originally used in Sandberg’s short is varied again and again, and it still works. The ghost or monster is hidden in the dark for most of the time, but even when you can see more of it by the end, it doesn’t lose much of its horror. The “friend’s” ghost backstory that I dreaded in the trailer is delivered elegantly and it actually sounds a little disturbing. But what sets this film above its mainstream competition are the characters and their relationships. Everyone is nice or at least you can understand their behaviour. But, most importantly, they aren’t one-dimensional figures devoid of personality and, already from the beginning, the film works with relationships that are not totally banal. I won’t say that it delivers some nuanced psychological picture, but it still goes a lot further than the overrated Conjuring. Although Lights Out is basically an intimate horror movie, for me it’s better than Wan’s bigger works. The characters are under a real threat. Technically it is comparable to the premier league. It’s unlikely to be the best of the year (that one already appears regularly in indie waters), but it’s certainly the best mainstream horror flick in recent years. I will gladly watch it again. 9/10 (07/21/2016)