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          

Arrival

Year of Release:  2016
Director:  Denis Villeneuve
Screenplay  Eric Heisserer, based on the short story "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang
Starring:  Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma
Running Time:  116 minutes
Genre:  Science-fiction

Twelve giant objects appear floating above apparently random places around the globe.  Linguist Dr. Louise Brooks (Adams) and theoretical physicist Dr. Ian Donnelly (Renner) are called in to investigate an object hovering above Montana.  As they try and find a way to communicate with the alien creatures inside, the international situation quickly deteriorates into fear and panic, and it becomes a race against time to discover the alien's purpose before global war breaks out.

If your a fan of science-fiction, then you have likely seen about a million and one films about aliens arriving on Earth, or humans discovering aliens in outer space, and almost immediately being able to communicate with them.  This film shows how difficult communication would likely be.  If humanity was to encounter an alien race, their terms of reference, the way their minds would work, would be so different to ours, it would be extremely difficult to find any common ground.  This is not an action-packed alien invasion film, it is serious-minded science-fiction dealing with big issues such as the nature of time and memory, communication between species, human aggression and connection.  There are shades of films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Close Encounters of the Third Kind  (1977) and Interstellar (2014) but this is very much it's own film.  There is at least one element at the end that felt a little pat, but this is a minor quibble, and this remains one of the best science-fiction films of recent years, mixing suspense, food for thought and emotion.  It benefits from some incredible performances with Amy Adams proving that she is one of the greatest actresses working today.

Amy Adams in Arrival