MovieChat Forums > Lights Out (2016) Discussion > Horrible pg-13 jump scare schlock fest t...

Horrible pg-13 jump scare schlock fest that relies stupid characters


Spoiler alert:

Let's stay over with mom. We'll set up a montage of putting out extra bulbs, hiding flashlights, lighting candles and setting up the living room as a sort of bunker of light. Then, instead of staying together where there is safety in numbers, we'll have the young boy stay alone in his room with a f'ing candle to protect him.

But the boy doesn't want to sleep alone and asks his big sister to sleep with him in his room, upstairs, by the room with the ghost lady, leaving the boyfriend alone downstairs.

I don't know, idiots, why not stay together?

Oh yeah....the "plot". So after setting up all of the lights, and extra bulbs in a montage what happens? The ghost cuts the power to the house. OK. I guess the montage was pointless. Talk about lazy script writing.

So the boyfriend runs outside to check the street light - because reasons - instead of running upstairs to check on his g/f and her brother. Because plot, of course.

The girlfriend wakes up and decides to go check the fuse box in the basement BY HERSELF and leaves her brother alone, asleep, in a dark room with a single candle to save him. Did the movie establish that Diane won't attack you if you're sleeping? NO? Then why did she leave him alone and defenseless while asleep in a room with a candle?

So the boy wakes up, freaks out (duh) and runs downstairs - after being attacked - and finds the sister in the basement. He tells her "don't ever leave me again". Apparently the kid is the only one with any intelligence.

Sister tells him she won't.

what a liar.

Not but moments later she is ditching her brother by a fireplace to go exploring on her own with a blacklight.

Because "plot".

Formulaic schlop like this is why the horror genre has become a joke. There was no backstory to this movie other than "mom was in mental asylum and met a girl who was not good and then an experiment happened now ghost...don't worry about it".

The jump scares were so painfully obvious they didn't even work and the ghost wasn't even scary when she was on the screen. It was just a black shape with eyes.

Something needs to change in the horror industry. This even has James Wan's name on it (it clearly is more of a liability these days than a boon).

Disappointing, at best.

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Well not everything can be like the classics otherwise it would just be the same old thing and get boring. Horror changes just as every other genre does, so of course the way horror is done is going to be different. This movie had some of the smartest characters in a horror film that I've seen in quite a while. I mean, I'd like to see you be as quick thinking and smart as them in the same exact situation. You wouldn't be. Most people wouldn't. Plus it's not like the girlfriend just left her boyfriend downstairs, he agreed that it was okay and that he would be fine. Which, he was. He survived, and as he said he was fine on his own. And the jump scares were far from predictable, unless you happen to be psychic. The only predictable one was when Martin was looking through the doorway and the ghost slammed the door on him. Otherwise most, if not all, were very well done and so much better than the jump scares we get in other movies. Also, the ghosts design was brilliant. Less is more, as they say, and I would've been very disappointed if they had given her look more detail because her being the shadow with piercing white eyes was creepy, and adding anything more would've ruined it. Finally, it's a horror movie, which are all notorious for making a whole story out of a minuscule plot. You can legitimately summarize hundreds of horror movies with one single simple plot summary. It just depends on how it's done. And this was done very well. With smart characters who knew what to do to survive, to good cinematography, to creepy/scary scenes, it was very well done.

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Yes dude. They were absolutely sure with all the lights on, yes. I said to my wife: "Ok, no backup lights, who stupid are they. Wait, the next minute the lights of the house will go off"... .Swoop, they went off. Ridiculous.

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Honestly, while it could have been a lot better, it's one of the better modern horror films I've seen in the last several years. Having just watched a few recent ones, like The Visit and Ouija: Origin of Evil, and can say that this film was more enjoyable, and while sad, had a more satisfying conclusion.

And being PG-13, who cares? Not every film needs to be super dark, gory as hell and disturbing as hell, purely for shock value. That is precisely what I find wrong with most modern horror films in the first place. The characters in this movie weren't geniuses, but they were hardly the inexplicable morons that most horror movie characters tend to be.

I wouldn't say I LOVED Lights Out. But it was at least somewhat enjoyable.

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And what is different about that?

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I agree. I actually enjoyed the beginning even tho it was cliche jump scares they were done fairly well. It just didn't work well after the beginning however and that's where the movie sadly falls apart.

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good one OP...I totally agree with everything, couldnt have said it any better myself...this is a laughable mess of a bad boring movie 

~If the realistic details fails, the movie fails~

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