Lights Out
Director: David F. Sandberg
Talent: Teresa Palmer, Gabriel Bateman, Maria Bello, Alicia Vela-Bailey
Release Date: 19th August
Lights Out, directed in his feature length debut by David F. Sandberg, has plenty to recommend it, from a clever central premise — a family is stalked by a demonic entity who can only take corporeal form in the dark — and a likeable lead performance by Australian actress Teresa Palmer, to a lean, mean running time and a few decent jump scares. But none of this matters when weighed against the simplistic and seriously misguided way in which the film deals with the subject of clinical depression.
Unlike, say, 2014’s The Babadook, a not entirely dissimilar production that examined an equally complex issue — namely, how the resentment that parents sometimes harbour towards their children can spiral into domestic abuse — under a horror lens with deep intelligence and commendable refusal to provide easy answers, Lights Out is naïve, uninformed and even irresponsible, with a violent climax that conveys, perhaps unintentionally, a very troubling message regarding mental illness and suicide. Not enough thought went into this one.
Words: Felipe Deakin
