Lights Out

Year of Release:  2016
Director:  David F. Sandberg
Screenplay:  Eric Heisserer, based on the short film Lights Out by David F. Sandberg
Starring:  Teresa Palmer, Gabriel Bateman, Alexander DiPersia, Maria Bello, Billy Burke
Running Time:  81 minutes
Genre:  Supernatural horror

Rebecca (Palmer) worries about her young half-brother Martin (Bateman), who lives alone with her estranged mother Sophie (Bello), who suffers from mental illness.   Rebecca soon finds out that martin and Sophie are both haunted by a powerful supernatural entity known as Diana (Alicia Vela-Bailey) who only manifests in the dark, a being that Rebecca remembers from her own childhood, and that now seems to be coming after her.

Most good horror films tap into a primal fear, in this case fear of the dark, one of the most universal fears there are.  Starting out as an award winning three minute short film, this isn't a particularly good movie, it relies too much on the same scares, the characters aren't particularly well sketched out, there are few surprises and the entity and the rules by which it operates are shown too early on, which diminishes her effectiveness later on.  Having said this however, there are times when it does work, and some of the scares provide a real jolt, and as a whole there is enough entertainment to pass the time, particularly when they try and find ingenious ways to provide light.  The entity herself, a shadowy, spindly, clawed figure rising out of the darkness, is striking.

Gabriel Bateman and Teresa Palmer in Lights Out          

A History of Violence

Year:  2005
Director:  David Cronenberg
Screenplay:  Josh Olsen, based on the graphic novel A History of Violence by John Wagner and Vince Locke
Starring:  Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt, Ashton Holmes, Peter MacNeill
Running Time:  96 minutes
Genre:  Crime, action, drama, gangsters

Canadian director David Cronenberg is probably most familiar to audiences as the "King of Venereal Horror" with films such as Shivers (1975), Rabid (1976), The Brood (1979), Scanners (1980), Videodrome (1982), The Fly (1986), Dead Ringers (1988) and the hugely controversial Crash (1996).  Here he makes his first entry into the crime thriller genre, with largely successful results.

In the small town of Millbrook, Indiana, Tom Stall (Mortnesen) owns the local restaurant and is a well-liked family man.  After he is forced to kill two gunmen in self-defense, when they attempt to rob his reatuarant, Tom is hailed as a national hero.  However, before long he is is visited by a group of mobsters led by the sinister Fogarty (Harris), who threaten him and his family.  Fogarty insists that Stall is not who he claims to be, and Tom is forced to confront his own dark history of violence.

On one level this is a gripping crime thriller, full of action and suspense, and on another level it is a meditation on how violence affects those who commit it, and the way it both attracts and repels, frequently at the same time.  Maria Bello puts in a strong performance as Tom's initially loving wife, who is terrified by the changes in her husband, but is at the same time aroused by the previously latent savagery that she glimpses in him, while their bullied son (Ashton Holmes) shows that his father's potential for violence is also within him enabling him to strike back against his high school tormentors. 

The film is well made effectively depicted cluttered small town domesticity, and the cast give strong perfomances throughout, with Viggo Mortnesen being a particular stand out in the lead.  As fun as the gangster thriller scenes are, the film is strongest when it deals with the Stall family.  The climax is too abrupt but the film ends with a powerful and ambiguous scene.

As you might expect from the title and the plot there is a fair amount of violence here and Cronenberg has never been known to back away from the depiction of violence, but as usual in his films, the violence is not glamorised or particularly dwelt upon. 

Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello confront A History of Violence