Lights Out (2016 film)


Lights Out is a 2016 American supernatural horror film directed by David F. Sandberg in his directorial debut, produced by Lawrence Grey, James Wan, and Eric Heisserer and written by Heisserer. It stars Teresa Palmer, Gabriel Bateman, Billy Burke, and Maria Bello. It is based on Sandberg's 2013 short film of the same name and features Lotta Losten, who starred in the short.
After the short film's success, Sandberg announced a film adaptation based on his short film. Principal photography for the film began in June 2015 in Los Angeles. Filming wrapped on August 5, 2015.
The film had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 8, 2016, and was released in the United States and Canada on July 22, 2016, by Warner Bros. The film received positive reviews from critics, with many praising the direction, screenplay, acting, photography and musical score, and grossed $148million against a budget of $4.9million.

Plot

In a textile factory during closing hours, an employee named Esther encounters a silhouette of a strange woman with claw-like hands when the lights are off, but cannot see it when the lights are on. After she leaves, her boss Paul encounters the woman and is killed.
Paul's stepdaughter Rebecca is called into the school nurse's office because of her brother, Martin. Rebecca and Martin are half-siblings, sharing the same mother, Sophie. The nurse was unable to get in touch with Sophie to inform her that Martin has been falling asleep in class lately. A Child Protective Services agent questions Rebecca about Martin's living conditions. Rebecca tells the official that Sophie has depression and is taking antidepressants.
Martin tells his sister that their mother has been talking to a woman named "Diana". Rebecca assures him that Diana is not real, and that she had also heard their mother talk to the imaginary girl when she was a child. Rebecca gets into an argument with Sophie when she realizes her mother is not taking her medication, so she takes Martin to her apartment. That night, Rebecca is woken by the same shadowed woman that killed Paul. She narrowly escapes an attack when she turns the lights on, making the woman disappear. The next morning, she notices the name "Diana" has been scratched into her floor, along with a scratch drawing of a stick figure. She remembers finding the same name and drawing as a child, and realizes Diana is real.
Rebecca finds a box of medical records and research in Paul's office. His findings reveal that her mother was admitted to a mental hospital as a child. While there, she befriended a young patient named Diana. Diana suffered from a severe skin condition that meant she could not go out in sunlight, and was accidentally killed by the hospital staff when they tried an experimental surgery on her under intense light. It was believed that she was evil and was able to "get into people's heads". Diana's father committed suicide after Diana got into his head and influenced him to kill himself.
Rebecca, her boyfriend Bret, and Martin stage an intervention with Sophie about how Sophie is letting Diana haunt them. Sophie becomes irate but secretly asks Rebecca for help, as Diana won't let Sophie go. The group stays the night at Sophie's, intending to get her help in the morning. To avoid an attack from Diana during the night, they rig the house to be as brightly lit as possible. This proves useless when Diana cuts the power to the neighborhood. She traps Rebecca and Martin in the basement and attempts to kill Bret. Bret escapes and seemingly abandons the others. In the basement, Rebecca finds a black light; when she clearly sees Diana with it, she realizes it's not powerful enough to harm her but she doesn't disappear in it and can get severely hurt if a bright light shines on her while the black light is still shining on her.
Bret returns with two police officers. The officers free Martin and Rebecca from the basement. The officers also see the shadow of Diana, but she kills them. Rebecca and Martin goes out, but Martin insists on getting their mom out as well. She send Martin and Bret out and goes back for her mother. As she climbs the stairs, Diana tells Rebecca that she killed Rebecca's father years ago. As Diana prepares to kill her, Sophie appears with a gun from one of the dead officers. Sophie has realized she is the tether for Diana to exist in the real world, and sacrifices herself to save Rebecca. As her body falls, Diana vanishes.
After the long night, Bret comforts Martin and Rebecca in an ambulance outside the house, assuring them that Diana is truly gone.

Cast

Development

Sandberg, along with his wife Lotta Losten, created the initial short film for a film competition. Although the film did not win the competition, the short soon went viral, leading to Sandberg to be contacted by several agents, to the point where he had to develop a spreadsheet to keep track of them all. One of the contacts was Lawrence Grey who wanted to collaborate with James Wan in order to produce a feature-length version. Although Wan enjoyed the short, he was hesitant that it could be turned into a feature until Sandberg produced a treatment for the feature-length version.
The move to Hollywood was somewhat hectic for the couple, requiring that Losten quit her day job in order to do so. Once in Hollywood the two were unable to get an apartment due to not having a US credit score, forcing them to rent Airbnb on a monthly basis.

Casting

In June 2015, Gabriel Bateman and Teresa Palmer were cast in the film as the child and teenager leads. In that same month, Maria Bello was cast in the film as the mother of Bateman and Palmer's characters, alongside Alexander DiPersia as the boyfriend of Palmer's character, Billy Burke as the stepfather of Palmer's character and father of Bateman's character, and Alicia Vela-Bailey as the main antagonist Diana were also starring it. Sandberg had not worked with a film crew or visited a film set before directing Lights Out; he had to ask the first assistant director, "So when do I say action?"

Filming

Principal photography for the film began in June 2015 in Los Angeles. Filming wrapped on August 5, 2015.

Special effects

Special effects of having the ghost appear and disappear were mostly done by using a split-screen technique as also used in the short. Sandberg said "Whenever she's in frame with another character, it's basically just a split screen. So you shoot it with her and without her. You turn the camera on with her, you turn it off and she walks off, and then you turn it on again. It's super simple, actually." Sandberg also made a list of what he called the "light gags", or different ways to create light sources from flashlights to cell phones and gunfire. In the scene when Diana appears in Rebecca's room, James Wan suggested replacing passing car headlights in an early treatment with the flashing neon sign that appears in the final film.
Sandberg originally based the character of Rebecca on a real girl that he knew who was suffering from depression, and who was engaging in self-harm, which is why Rebecca has scars on her arms, but the development of the film made it less about depression and more of a ghost story in which Diana would have been the real person who died and became a ghost. Wan came up with the idea of making Diana the ghost. Rebecca's boyfriend was also given a twist of being a rocker, but is actually committed and responsible, even driving a safe car like a Volvo. Another twist Sandberg liked was making the imaginary friend for the mother rather than the trope of having the friend be for the child.

Suicide concerns and ending

After hearing concerns from critics that the ending of the film was promoting suicide, Sandberg interviewed with The A.V. Club where he said he was distressed about that idea, and wanted to explain his position. He said that he originally wanted to make a film about depression, as he has also suffered from it, and that one of his friends had committed suicide. Diana was not a ghost back then, but during the development of the film, it became more of a horror film. It still retained some themes about depression and mental illness. He had originally shot a second ending to the film in which Martin becomes depressed and Diana comes back one more time before she is killed. However, test audiences hated that ending, saying that Sophie's sacrifice would have been in vain.

Release

The film had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 8, 2016. The film also screened at Comic-Con on July 20, 2016, and was released on July 22, 2016.

Reception

Box office

Lights Out grossed $67.3 million in the United States and Canada and $81.6 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $148.9 million, against a production budget of $4.9 million.
In North America, Lights Out was projected to gross $13–15 million from 2,900 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $1.8 million from its Thursday night screenings and $9.2 million on its first day. The film exceeded expectations and earned $21.7 million in its opening weekend, finishing at third place behind fellow newcomer Star Trek Beyond and holdover The Secret Life of Pets.
In other territories, the film earned $8.5 million in its opening weekend from 3,737 screens in key markets of Russia and Australia along with 30 smaller Eastern European and Asian markets. The film benefited from being released in the wake of the global success of The Conjuring 2. It debuted at first place in Russia with $1.7 million. Its other top openings were recorded in South Korea, France, the U.K. and Spain. Its biggest earning markets are South Korea, Mexico, the U.K. and Spain.

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 76% based on 174 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 6.32/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Lights Out makes skillful use of sturdy genre tropes—and some terrific performances—for an unsettling, fright-filled experience that delivers superior chills without skimping on story." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 58 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
Lucy O'Brien of IGN gave the film 7/10, saying: "ith an unnerving monster at its core, great cast and relentless final sequence, Light's Out is a debut director Sandberg should be proud of. A clunky script occasionally loosens its grip on the nerves, but chances are Diana will still have you sleeping with the lights on for a good while after leaving the theatre." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film 4 stars out of 4, stating: "ven the most cynical, jaded, seen-it-all-before critic cannot deny certain visceral reactions to a film. Lights Out gave me the chills." Justin Lowe of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, " surprisingly maternal horror movie that relies as much on fraying emotional bonds as supernatural suspense to create tension, Lights Out deals with an array of primal fears that threaten to unravel a family's fundamental relationships, along with their sanity." Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times wrote, "packling over any copycat cracks with strong acting and fleet editing, Lights Out delivers minimalist frights in old-school ways."
A few critics were less taken with the film. James Berardinelli of Reelviews gave 2 stars out of 4, saying: "nfortunately, the film stumbles, offering too few legitimate scares and displaying an overreliance on traditional horror movie clichés." Berardinelli detested the film's camerawork, characters as being "thinly drawn", and the screenplay "spending inordinate amount of time providing a backstory..." Rex Reed of Observer gave 1 star out of 4, saying: "the film's screenplay focuses almost entirely on the number of resourceful and ingenious ways the characters dream up to keep the lights on, stave off the next attack and stay alive—lights from candles, flashlights, cellphones, the car in the driveway—before the batteries die; The fun wears out fast and so does the "gotcha" factor."

Accolades

Sequel

In July 2016, a week after the film's release, it was announced that New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Pictures had greenlit a sequel. Heisserer and Sandberg will return to write and direct the film, respectively, while Wan and Lawrence Grey will return to produce under their Atomic Monster and Grey Matter Productions banners.
In 2019, Andi Osho reprised her role as social worker Emma Glover from Lights Out in Sandberg's film Shazam!, set in the DC Extended Universe, in an Easter egg appearance. As of 2020, there has been no update on the feature film sequel's development, although on April 2, 2020, the short film Lights Out has received a companion piece follow-up, Shadowed.