Best movie of this year hands down!

the audience applauded

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

"Lights Out" is by far the most boring and uninspired movie I have seen in a long time. Period.

After seeing the viral horror short, which was pretty effective I thought maybe it carry over to a feature, but not a chance.This was the 2-minute short scare gags running for 90-minutes. Scene after scene with just unbelievable bad writing and unrealistic situations. Every piece of dialogue was overly written exposition to make sure we got jam packed information of background stories so we are supposed to care about them. Typical formula Hollywood writing. Cram in information through dialogue (TELL) rather than SHOWING us.Sometimes you don't need to give us that much exposition. It can inferred in good writing scenes.A prime example of bad writing it the scene where the boy's sisters takes him from his mom in the beginning. The mom doesn't want this to happen but she just stands there helpless and et's her "daughter" take her son away. Not even an attempt to resist. Nothing. No mother would ever let that happen. the movie is just filled ridiculous scene after scene like that. The boyfriend brings this up, not at the time or in the car, but AFTER they get home. Right, again, would never happen.Skip it.

Being bloated is never a good thing, however, also being too short while not really delivering the full story, and/or the full story in a compelling way, is also not a good thing. Lights Out lost me with its weak story development, its pacing as well as its short running time.Nobody ever explains the full situation to Bret. Diana's story comes to light in a very dim fashion. Rebecca is busy calling here mother a "nutjob", while she knows exactly what she is going through, and what makes it especially worse, is how that was shown literally in the scene before that comment. Sure, perhaps she is in denial, however the film doesn't portray that very well about her. All she seems like is distant, walls up, closed in and impersonal.Also, Martin knew at his age that Diana was the cause of his father's death, yet Rebecca spent all her life, under the impression that her father just ran out on them, when she went through the very same ordeal Martin did. Okay sure, maybe she didn't click for whatever reason, but for her to inform her mother, as if she didn't know either, just raises some concerns.The movie cutting to post Paul's death without some kind of reference or anchor, was jarring. For a short while you find yourself asking, how long has he been dead? It feels like its been a day, but the film gives the impression that it has been much longer, maybe even years, but is it? Can it?Then there's Rebecca still opting to stay in the house, to try and save her mother, when she already knows that Diana cannot harm her, which renders the entire endeavour moot.Lights Out has issues, that aren't necessarily plot holes, but rather more disregarded and dismissed expositions, and at 1 hour 15 minutes, I guess something was always going to suffer.From there, as gorgeous as Teresa Palmer is, and my oh my she is a stunner, her performance in this film was subpar, while everybody else was somewhat forgettable. The horror bit of the film was satisfying enough however, though it felt a bit repeated since it occurred in the same manner throughout the film without evolving. 5.4/10.

Even the intro alone got me really really shocked. One of the best movies ever.