Ever since I watched Steven King's 1985 film Silver Bullet when I was but a toddler, I have had a deep love and appreciation for horror films. I watch them with a critical eye, paying special attention to the aspects that I believe make the biggest difference: lighting, shot angles, and color, also known as my "holy trinity".
In recent years, director/producer James Wan has, in my opinion, almost perfected the combination of lighting, angles, and color to create the perfect, most artfully done movies of horror. When I saw that he was producing a Lights Out, I had to check it out as soon as possible, although it was not exactly what I expected.
Unlike Wan's other films, such as Insidious and the Conjuring, this movie, despite its title, did not pay so much attention to detail to my holy trinity. The lighting did not enhance my focus, the angles did not amaze me, and the colors on the screen did little to shape my perspective. This I found disappointing, but the film was still intriguing enough for me to watch it a second time.
Lights Out is the story of a woman, Sophia, with clinical depression who had what she describes as a "different, special" friend named Diana who she met at a psychiatric hospital when they were children. We later find out that Diana had the ability to get into people's mind and manipulate them, and it is theorized that she got into Sophia's head and made her believe they were friends.
However, Diana only comes around when Sophia is at her worst. She makes Sophia more reclusive, makes her environment a much darker space, and terrorizes her family to the point of driving them away. With her children terrified out of their minds and crying desperately for help, Sophia realizes that Diana cannot exist at all without her, and Sophia takes her own life to save her children's.
There are a couple points in the film in which Sophia's children blatantly call her "crazy", ask her to take her antidepressants, search for her antidepressants, and describe her as unstable. All of these paint a negative picture of mental illness, which is something that I never enjoy or appreciate because it does nothing to reduce the stigma.
However, I believe this film does a great job of demonstrating that an individual's demon not only affects their mind, but the lives of those around them. It changes their entire atmosphere, which is shared with the people closest to them and can have the power to change their personal atmosphere's as well. After watching this movie twice, a very important message has been reiterated: if mental illness is not taken care of, it can destroy more than one life.
Although this movie was not as artful in horror as I had hoped, it definitely has its spooky aspects that can be appreciated. The plot behind Diana is questionable, because we never really find out what Diana is, but the overall take-away from the film, at least for me, is much more significant.
