8/17/2023 0 Comments Lights out diana actorIndeed, it's only about 80 minutes long so it'd be poor form for Sandberg or screenwriter Eric Heisserer to waste too many of them on the jibber jabber. Sure, we get little additional tidbits about Diana here and there, but it's not like the movie stops cold for some doctor to give five minutes' worth of exposition when there's only 20 minutes left in the runtime. Sandberg (expanding his original, well-received short) to keep the scares coming at a pretty fast clip during the movie's last half hour or so. Here, most of what minimal backstory the movie has is presented to us in the first half, allowing first time director David F. Not only do they avoid pointless and telegraphed fake scares as much as possible (no mirror scares!), but I am accustomed to getting a break in these sort of movies, usually to slow down and let a bunch of exposition get in the way. And while the trailer focuses on Diana's more subtle scares (standing motionless in a dark corner of a room, with a protagonist unsure of what they're seeing), she's not exactly subtle for the most part - she's big on grabbing and throwing people, almost always finding ways to be more proactive.Īnd that's why the jumps that worked on me did so with such success. She also rarely takes a break, finding any kind of dark and taking the opportunity to lash out even during the daytime (from under a bed), giving the film a sense of "you're never really safe" without ever breaking its established rule (though she lucks out with an inordinate number of electrical failures that turn well-lit rooms into death chambers in an instant). Her first victim is crumbled and mangled as if they were just slammed into a tree by Jason Voorhees himself, and she attacks the other, "safer" cast members (read: a child and also our heroine, Teresa Palmer) with the same sort of intensity. There are two things that I think are key to its success, separating it from the rubbish I half-expected it to be. One is that Diana, our ghost, does NOT mess around - I was actually kind of stunned at how frequently she attacked, and how violent those attacks were. It's not a great horror film to be championed for decades to come, but it's a solid scare generator that keeps it simple and succeeds where it counts. As the film is based on the same-named short from a few years back, it's not surprising that the plot doesn't get too much more complicated than this, but what DID surprise me was how relatively entertaining it was. well, he probably doesn't want to know what happens then. Burke is on the phone with his son who is concerned with his mother's strange behavior, and thus doesn't have time to pay attention to this nonsense, though he gets his own scare fairly soon thereafter, and also figures out the ghost's weakness with surprising quickness - if he stays in the light, he'll be OK. She turns it off and on a few times until something scarier happens (you've seen this in the trailer), but she does not get offed - she goes to tell her boss (Billy Burke) about it. In an opening scene, an employee at a textile company sees "something" in a dark corner of a room as she turns the light out, only for it to disappear when the light turns back on. You want jump scares? You'll get your jump scares here - and they're actually pretty effective! Darkness Falls is the obvious example, and I feared that this would be similarly underwhelming - luckily, that wasn't the case, and I suspect the movie will be a big draw, especially among those who hated The Witch for daring to be more subtle with its brand of terror. Everyone has at least some fear of the dark - no one walks into a completely dark room and thinks "Oh good, I can't see anything and that's how I prefer it!" No, you fumble for a light switch ASAP, because even if you're not afraid of a creepy monster in there, you ARE afraid of walking into a desk and banging up your knee - it's still a fear! For many, they DO fear what could be lurking in the unknown and will only feel safe when the lights are turned on, so it's no surprise that Lights Out isn't the first nor will it be the last horror film to focus on a horror villain that sticks to the dark, where even a basic flashlight can keep you safe and ward the evil thing off.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |