This summer's latest horror movie release in theatres is David F. Sandberg's "Lights Out," a movie about a supernatural being who lives in the shadows as it hunts for human prey.
…..or is it?
Going into the movie, I had no expectations because I had no idea what it was about, only that it was a horror movie. Before the title of the movie was even shown, BAM! Cheap jump scares already in your face. From there, my expectations plummeted. “Great”, I thought, “another supernatural horror movie with creepy figures popping out and no plot." I'm very picky about my horror movies; for instance, "Paranormal Activity" is pretty much the epitome of everything I hate in a "scary" movie. It’s always the same thing: suburban family starts being haunted out of nowhere, demonic possession usually comes in somewhere, and then eventually some ghost hunters come and get rid of the supernatural beings or everyone in the family dies. Typical horror tropes.
As the movie progressed, the characters did not develop, which just made me feel like the movie was even worse.The plot seemed inconcise, the characters were consistently flat, and with seemingly no context, not to mention random cheap scares. What happened next completely changed my perspective of the film and turned it in an entirely different direction and even changed the genre. I left the movie theatre raving to the friend I saw it with about how accurate of a statement it was: "Lights Out."
CAUTION - SPOILERS BELOW.
I've never actually written a movie review before, so in order for me to elaborate on why the movie was so moving, I have to explain the entire film. I'll start off with the characters' names so I can reference them directly and not use phrases such as, "the mom."
The Mom = Sophie
The Freaky Shadow Woman = Diana
Troubled Older Sister With Daddy Issues = Becca
Becca's Boyfriend = let's just call him Becca's boyfriend
Elementary School-Aged Son in a Living Nightmare Throughout the Entire Ordeal = Martin (also Becca's little brother)
Alright, so now that that's over with, let's get down to the movie! Be extra cautious, this explains the movie in its entirety so it's riddled with spoilers. Beware.
In a mannequin warehouse where Martin's stepfather works, a shop employee sees a silhouetted woman when she turns the lights off, but then sees nothing when the lights are on. She warns the owner, who is Martin's stepdad; he's later dragged into the darkness and murdered by the ghostly woman.
Step daughter Becca lives alone in an apartment, away from Sophie and Martin. Sophie has a documented mental illness and depression originating in her childhood that has come back, in which she talks to an "imaginary friend." When Martin sees the apparition with his mother, his fear causes him to have insomnia, and he starts falling asleep in class constantly, which prompts Child Protective Services (CPS) to try to intervene, and gets Becca involved in the issue, although originally she has absolutely no contact with her family.
Becca takes Martin to her apartment to protect him. That night, she awakens to scratching by the silhouette, who almost attacks her but disappears when Becca turns the lights on. The next morning, Becca finds what the woman was scratching into her floor: the name "Diana." She remembers her own experience with Diana from childhood, the reason she left home when her father left them.
Becca remembers Diana as horrific childhood nightmares, but didn't believe that she was real. The etched name makes her believe she's otherwise and later viewers find out just how real she is.
The specific event shown from Becca's childhood is when she's about 7, drawing a picture of her, her mom, and her dad. Suddenly, the lights go out, and when they come back on, the picture is gone. Becca later finds it in the closet, with the father scratched out and a black figure labeled "Diana" between her and her mom. At the time, her father had just left, which had sent her mother into another depression, which is when Diana usually comes around.
Later that night, Sophie has a movie night with Martin, but includes Diana, frightening Martin. She tells him the story about Diana, a friend she had when she was in a mental institution as a preteen for her depression. Diana had an unusual condition that made her skin extremely light-sensitive.
Trying to do research on Sophie's past, Becca finds a box of old documents from her stepfather's office that contains information on Sophie and Diana, and discovers that the doctors experimented on Diana in the institution, killing her through overexposure to light (through an attempt to use light therapy to help her).
The freaky figure is Diana: her manipulative ghost uses Sophie to be able to manifest into a physical form, convincing Sophie that they are friends and must kill anyone who tries to help her out of her depression.
Becca confronts Sophie about Diana but Sophie denies the accusation of her demon not being a live human being. Becca and her boyfriend decide to stay overnight to protect Martin. They take several safety precautions to make sure all of the lights stay on. Later that night, Sophie and Becca reconcile and Sophie secretly passes her a note saying, "I need help" before being tugged back into the darkness of her room by Diana. Becca realizes that her mother is being controlled by the demonic ghost.
Knowing that they're trying to get rid of her, Diana traps Becca and Martin in the basement by turning off all the lights via the circuit breaker. Becca's boyfriend is attacked by Diana in the dark but escapes and contacts the police. Becca realizes that while Diana disappears in light, using a black light can allow them to see Diana. She discovers scrawled writings in the basement, explaining how Diana will not let anyone take Sophie. Diana writes that she killed Rebecca's father to get closer to Sophie; he didn't actually leave them.
So here is where the importance of the entire movie comes in. Police arrive at the house and break down the door to let Becca and Martin out, but are killed by Diana almost immediately after because they have no idea what they're getting into, like in most horror films when police get involved.
Becca sends Martin outside to her boyfriend and stays inside to try to rescue Sophie from Diana. Diana throws Becca over the banister, and is about to kill her when Sophie arrives. Sophie, holding a gun, tells Diana that she wasn't allowed to hurt her children, and starts to shoot at her. Diana says, "You know that can't kill me." Sophie responds with, "No, but I know what will. There's no you without me." Sophie then points the gun on herself and commits suicide, causing Diana to disappear.
And that's the end of the movie. Throughout the whole film, I was preparing to stay the night at my boyfriend's house because the movie was actually making me afraid of the dark, but the end completely turned the movie around and I left with a generally positive feeling.
For some, the unstated intention of the movie may have gone right over their heads; they just saw it as any other horror movie. But that's not it at all. Looking back, there was foreshadowing of the meaning throughout the entire film, but subtle enough to be unexpected, and is very also cleverly executed. Read between the lines. This movie is very conspicuously about depression, similar to how the movie "The Babadook" is about grief. Though the connection is foggy in "Babadook", the parallels in "Lights Out" are shockingly clear.
The more I thought about it in this light, the more apparent it seemed. Diana is a perfect representation of what depression feels like, especially as a hereditary or lifelong mental illness as opposed to situational depression.
Diana is a figure who hides in the shadows. She tells you she's your friend while in reality she's your enemy. In the movie, she only comes around when Sophie's depression begins to worsen. Diana feeds off of Sophie's sadness and she won't go away. She gets inside of your head and starts to control your thoughts. And the worst part is that you believe her. Even when you know something is wrong and you need help, Diana is the one keeping you from reaching out. In the film, she threw out and hid all of the antidepressants so that Sophie was incapable of getting better, because Diana can only exist when Sophie is at her worst.
You neglect your well-being not necessarily because you want to, but because it literally feels like you have no control over your own life. Diana controls your life. Diana isolates you, hurts the ones around you, keeps you from reaching out for help through fear of the unknown.
There comes a point where you’ve been depressed for so long that the concept of any other emotion is absolutely terrifying and foreign because you've forgotten what it was like to feel anything else. A person can only appreciate happiness when they've felt sadness. When you have depression, falling in deeper after finally reaching a content place in your life is even more painful. It’s even more of a struggle to overcome when your joy is so swiftly and effortlessly stolen from you.
The movie didn't exactly send a positive message on conquering depression, but especially when you have lifelong mental illness like Sophie, it may seem like the only way out. Even when everything seems okay, an eventual breakdown feels imminent. You know Diana is going to come back and terrorize you again. So, in a way, it wasn't entirely irrational of her to commit suicide to get rid of Diana, especially when it meant saving her family.
To people who have never struggled with depression, this movie is a perfect way to capture the state of experiencing something terrifying and traumatic entirely against your will. Since depression is a mental illness, it's hard for some to believe or accept since there is no physical manifestation of it. It's just too difficult for some to understand. That's why you need to see this movie.
Depression is abstract, not corporeal. It isn’t something apparent like a little glowing neon sign over your head. This makes it difficult to demonstrate, and as a result, easy for others to reject the concept. People respond easily to things that are physical, tangible, physiological and things they can see. Putting the concept of depression into a form as scary as Diana can give others a taste of what having a mental illness or even a mood disorder is like because it makes the terror of that struggle more tangible and accurately illustrates its destructiveness. Diana was a terrific comparison to depression, something that many people go through every single day.
Diana is rock bottom. Diana represents every aspect of depression.
Overall, Lights Out is a complex movie with a much more impactful message than what it appears to be externally. I highly recommend watching it, even if horror movies aren’t your thing, just because of the ending plot twist and seeing what all the small details in the movie actually represent. As a movie review, I give this film a 7.8/10. You could wait for it to go to DVD, but watching it in theaters is worth it, too.
David Sandberg, director of Lights Out as his Hollywood Debut, was also the director of the inspiration for the movie, based on this short film you can watch on YouTube:
"Though I enjoy animation, documentary work, and short form drama I realized in 2013 that I had wound up quite far from my original goal of making horror and sci-fi films. I figured that in order to get someone with money to trust me with making horror films I better have something to show for myself. So together with my wife Lotta Losten we started making no budget horror films in our apartment. The second film we made was ‘Lights Out’.
Originally made as a contest submission for the Bloody Cuts Horror Challenge, ‘Lights Out’ became a huge viral hit with a combined total of over 20 million views. ‘Lights Out’ won the ‘Best Director’ award in the Bloody Cuts Horror Challenge and has went on to play at a whole bunch of film festivals around the world where it’s picked up a couple of awards along the way.
Thanks to the success of ‘Lights Out’ I’m now signed with the Paradigm agency and Gotham Group management in Los Angeles and with FatCat Films in Paris.
I'm very much a 'Jack of all trades' having done most things on my own productions. I’ve done everything from writing to visual effects to composing music. I enjoy all aspects of filmmaking and I don’t let the absence of budgets stop me from creating, I’ll make do with what I have." -David F. Sandberg