Fellow movie-goers: One of the best horror movies I have seen in a long time.
Here’s the premise: When her little brother, Martin (Gabriel Bateman), experiences the same events that once tested her sanity, Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) works to unlock the truth behind the terror, which brings her face to face with an entity that has an attachment to their mother, Sophie (Maria Bello.)
THIS is how you do a horror movie, pure and simple. LIGHTS OUT is based on a short film that took the internet by storm a while back, this is a fantastic expansion of the short film. I love the fact that there were no “fake” jumps; like a cat jumping out of a trash can; LIGHTS OUT relied solely on the fact that the movie was intense and on the edge of your seat kind of movie. This harkened back to Alfred Hitchcock, who was the king of making the audience frightened by what they DIDN’T see. Which is the best scare a person can have. Relying on a shadowy figure in the dark and not knowing when the shadowing figure would attack and NOT having the fake jump scares made this film so much better than many of the horror genre movies of today.
The cast were fantastic with Teresa Palmer and Gabriel Bateman stealing the show (besides the shadowy figure, who IS the star of the movie after all.) Maria Bello was deliciously psycho as she spent all her time conversing with the mysterious figure, maybe one of the best roles I have seen her in for some time.
For those who think you cannot have a scary PG-13 film, think again; I recommend you give LIGHTS OUT a try.
