Monday, August 22, 2016

LIGHTS OUT - One Heck of Scary Movie!

I finally decided to watch this horror movie by myself, since I knew that my wife would never watch this one in theater in the dark. So Sunday evening while she was having her own food tasting program and after I dropped my mom to the airport for her trip out of town, I drove back home, parked my car, walked to the nearest mall and buy the ticket for 3.15 PM. I purposely bought the ticket for a seat at the back and hoping there would be people on my left and right side. But when the studio opened, I went inside and found out that those seats were still empty. So there I was, sitting by myself watching a movie of ghost in the dark. What have I gotten myself into???

Brief Story Line

Movie started with the scene of Paul (Billy Burke - The Twilight saga) having conversation through internet video with his son Martin (Gabriel Bateman - Annabelle) in the factory where he worked. It was mentioned that Martin's mother sometime spoke by herself. Paul's colleague Esther was closing down the factory and she noticed something that would only show when the lights were turn off. She felt scared and told Paul to be careful. After the usual scary scenes of a horror movie, we were introduced to Paul's stepdaughter Rebecca (Teresa Palmer - The Sorcerer's Apprentice, I am Number Four etc) and her "boyfriend" Bret (Alexander DiPersia). 

Scene moved to Paul's house at night where Martin was having trouble sleeping and heard his mother Sophie (Maria Bello - A History of Violence, Grown Ups etc) having conversation when there was actually no one else at their house. On the following morning, Martin who fell asleep for the 3rd time in a week was asked by the Child Protection Services to call his mother and pick him up. But she was not picking up the phone so Rebecca instead was called. Rebecca came together with Bret and dropped Martin back home where she would fight with her mother about their long separation since Sophie felt left alone and depressed when Rebecca went out of the house after her father left them. Rebecca told Martin to bring his stuff so he could stay at her house.

Later that night when Martin was staying at Rebecca's house, the spirit was coming there and appeared again only when the lights were out. After some scary scenes, on the day after, Rebecca realized she had to find out about the spirit. So she decided to go back to her mother's house with Bret and found some documents relating to that spirit. Due to her poking around, the spirit really felt disturbed and told Rebecca to stay away. After doing some digging, Rebecca finally realized why the spirit was haunting them.

However, can she help Martin and her mother get away from it? Can they all be saved if the spirit was not going to leave them alone? Find them all in this one heck of a scary movie.

End of Brief Story Line

I heard some comments about this movie being a very scary one, with people even comparing it as scarier than most horror movies such as The Conjuring. It happens that this movie was produced by James Wan who was the director of The Conjuring. So when I watched this movie, I was expecting that I would be feeling terrified during the whole movie. However it turned out that the scary moments were only occasionally shown. When the scenes move to the background story, the spooky nuance was not really there. Unlike other very scary movie where even the background story was having scary or moments.

But during the scary scenes, they indeed were truly scary, especially when the spirit only materialize whenever the lights were out. As the usual horror movie, we would never know when the scary moments would appear and especially in this movie, it happened only at night. The last 25 minutes or so during the so called finale of the movie, we would be shown many of those moments. My only confusion was the audience in the theater laughed few times during this final,e though I did not find it to be funny. Perhaps they were doing that to shake the scared feelings? Anyway, I had only a little disappointment that when the spirit was finally shown, it was not as scary as when we were still kept in the dark.

Overall, this movie was a good scary one. The sound effect was the best! It also had a surprise twist and possible sequel (from what I read in the internet). Those looking for such kind movie would be satisfied. But remember that this is not the possession kind of movie or the slasher type. The premise was something new and it was good that they could think of a new smart way of scaring people. Perhaps due to my very high worry of the movie being totally scary, I was able to enjoy the movie a bit better when I felt that it was not really that scary. My most memorable scene would definitely be the one in Martin's room with Rebecca during the few last moment before the ending.

So if you are ok to watch horror movie in theater and you are not worried of being scared turning off the lights after you watch this one, then be my guest and see this one while it is still playing in the theater.

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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