How "Lights Out" Went From Viral Horror Short to Major Studio Scare-Fest

Lights Out - Who"s There Film Challenge (2013)

Teresa Palmer inLights Out. (Warner Bros.)

This weekend, the horror movie Lights Out will attempt to scare audiences silly with its tale of a woman (Teresa Palmer) trying to protect her younger brother from a malevolent spirit that only comes out in the dark. Helmed by first-time Swedish director David F. Sandberg, its got an excellent horror pedigree with Saw, Insidious, and Conjuring director James Wan serving as a producer. Its also got something else going for it: a fascinating origin story that starts with a terrifying two-and-a-half-minute viral video.

Lights Outs journey to the big screen began one night in 2013, when aspiring filmmaker Sandberg and his wife, Lotta Losten, shot a chilling horror short. They had no budget to speak of, used their Gothenburg apartment as a set and Losten herself as the star, and built a camera dolly with lights, rubber, and wood from (naturally) IKEA. Sandberg had been making animated shorts and working on documentary crews since 2006, but he was eager to break into horror and thought he had just the right scary idea: a story about a woman haunted by a shadowy figure who appears every time she turns off the light. (Sandberg created the onscreen special effects using Photoshop.)

Ive had that happen a lot, when you turn off the lights at home and you think you see like a shadow, or someone standing there, and you have to turn it back on, Sandberg told Yahoo Movies. Its nothing, but you think, Hmm, what if there actually was something in the dark every time you turned off the lights?

Sandberg entered the short in Britains b****y Cuts Horror Challenge. It didnt win it wasnt even a finalist but Sandberg was named Best Director. Yet a far greater prize came in the months that followed: The short went viral on Vimeo, YouTube, and other video platforms, racking up more than 20 million views. Watch it here if you dare.

Soon Sandberg was being bombarded by calls from managers, agents, producers, and studios. It was insane how much attention a two-and-a-half-minute short could get, he recalled. I had to make a spreadsheet of everyone I talked to just to keep track of everyone and what everyone was saying. One of those suitors was Lawrence Grey, a former Fox Searchlight executive who has since produced films like Hope Springs and Last Vegas and discovered the short film on Reddit in early 2015.

It was one of those things that just blew me away, said Grey. I watched it in my office during the day on a bright and sunny L.A. morning I shouldnt be scared at all. But I jumped every time. I went to bed that night seeing that thing in my dreams.

The next day Grey tracked Sandberg down. Sandberg said he and Losten had no intention of turning the short into a full-length feature, and even Grey wasnt sure it was possible. But Grey and Sandberg hit it off and started workshopping the concept, based on the premise of an adult having an imaginary friend, who turns out to be the spirit going bump in the night.

Grey also had the perfect collaborator in mind horror hitmaker James Wan. The two had known each other since the early 00s, when Grey attempted to bring the then unknown Wan into the Searchlight fold for a microbudgeted film he wanted to make called Saw (which, like Lights Out, was based on a short). Searchlight ultimately passed, and of course Saw and its six sequels went on to make over $400 million. But Grey and Wan had kept in touch. I said, You know, James, Im thinking back to when you and I first met when you showed me Saw, and I think I might have a guy whos like you, 10 years [earlier], recalled Grey.

Wan had seen the short, and while he was skeptical Sandberg could make the jump to a feature film, he was impressed by the treatment they created. What I really liked about it was the simplicity of the concept, Wan said. The idea is very universal: people afraid of the dark. Wan made Lights Out one of the first films hed produce under his new production banner, Atomic Monster.

Grey recruited screenwriter Eric Heisserer (who wrote theThing and Nightmare on Elm Street remakes) to pen the feature version. The filmmakers cast Teresa Palmer as a young woman who has to care for her younger brother (Gabriel Bateman) while attempting to save her mentally troubled mother (Maria Bello) from the evil spirit named Diana. Warner Bros. signed on to distribute, and Lights Out went into production with a $4.5 million budget (meaning, no more IKEA-based equipment).

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Watch the trailer:

Wan said one of the reasons he launched Atomic Monster was so he could give young genre filmmakers the tools they needed to make names for themselves. Im very thankful for the opportunity I had starting off, and I want to do the same, he said. Im not going to give [them] a lot of money, but what I think it does is it allows them to be very creative as a new, upcoming filmmaker.

Warner Bros. is obviously satisfied and the reviews so far have been solid. Sandberg has already gone into production on another one of the studios tentpole genre films, Annabelle 2, the sequel to the hit 2014 Conjuring spinoff that is currently shooting in Atlanta. (The film is again being produced by Wan.) It just went really fast and really smooth and people keep telling me, Dont get used to that, Sandberg said. Because thats not usually how it happens.

Lights Out opens July 22.

Watch Teresa Palmer talk about her own haunted house:

Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&ct2=us&usg=AFQjCNHlbKvn3DxMKihqHIZ3_H20l2A0cA&clid=c3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331&cid=52779161222063&ei=1YOSV8jDNZXWpwfp1bbQDA&url=https://www.yahoo.com/movies/how-lights-out-went-from-viral-horror-short-to-180304475.html

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Lights Out Review

Lights Out - Movie Review
Rating:

6.5out or 10

Cast:

Teresa Palmer as RebeccaAmiah Miller as Young RebeccaGabriel Bateman as MartinAlexander DiPersia as BretMaria Bello as SophieEmily Alyn Lind as Young SophieBilly Burke as PaulAlicia Vela-Bailey as DianaAva Cantrell as Young DianaLotta Losten as EstherAndi Osho as Emma

Directed by David F. Sandberg

Lights Out Review:

Lights Outhas a terrific new movie monster. After so many horror films with familiar tropes and situations, that alone is enough to recommend it. Diana (Alicia Vela-Bailey) is an inspired creation with a set of rules that Lights Outestablishes well and early, and even when those rules get bent a little, theres still much fun to be had in figuring out ways around them. The best moments in Lights Outare all about tweaking the audiences expectations and fears, and because of that the scares of Lights Outare legitimately frightening and thrilling.

Unfortunately, the story surrounding the monster isnt as elegantly done. Lights Outis the kind of film that you can see potential sequels down the road as being more effective, uncluttered with establishing all that origin, and letting this new monster run wild and free. The best horror plays with symbolism, metaphor, and larger thematic issues, and Lights Outtouches on all of that, but not as effectively as it should. Much like The Babadookor It Folllows, Diana represents a lot more than what is on screen, but those films established those themesmore gracefully. There is a deeper, more resonant film inside Lights Out, but its hamstrung by little nitpicky aspects that annoy.

Even so, there is little wasted time in Lights Out, and good thing because the film is only 82 minutes long. Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) is a young woman determined to live alone; her mother Sophie (Maria Bello) has been troubled for Rebeccas entire life, even doing a stint in a mental institution when she was younger. Rebecca has seen her parents damaged relationship end with her father running off, and shes wary of any attachments as a result, even refusing to let her longtime boyfriend Bret (Alexander DiPersia) stay overnight. But when her younger brother Martin (Gabriel Bateman) begins falling asleep in class, swearing up and down that some kind of evil creature is tormenting him, Rebeccas past comes crashing back to her. Sophia made a friend during her time at the institution, and now that friend has returned to plaguetheir family once again.

The best stuff in Lights Outinvolves the slowly-ramping tension surrounding Diana, who can only appear when there is no light. Much of the thrills involve what we cant see, and Lights Outdoes a lovely job of allowing the audience to imagine some evil, capering thing in the dark corners just beyond our vision. Director David Sandberg does a wonderful job keeping everything restrained and intense, using sound and mood to elevate the atmosphere, and not using a bunch of red herrings to distract and spook the audience. When something scary happens, its legitimate. I can see how James Wan, who produced Lights Out, would be attracted to this material both directors use every weaponin their considerable arsenals to establish tone and dread effectively, and like Wan, Sandberg isnt just giving us characters to throw into the wood chipper. We care for these people, and are even sympathetic to the monster, which always makes for a better horror film. Even the boyfriend, who in a 1980s version of this movie would just be fodder, gets moments to shine and gets the audiences empathy. Theres a pretty terrific sequence involving him and Diana that had the audience applauding.

My two issues with Lights Outfeel capricious on paper its always nice when a filmmaker can make a concise, short movie, but when a movie runs shorter than 90 minutes it always feels like Im not getting the most bang for my buck, but Sandberg and screenwriter Eric Heisserer give us a lot to ponder in Lights Outs running time. My second issue is more with the films struggle with Maria Bellos Sophie, who comes across as not so much a troubled woman but as a bad parent, who pushes Rebecca and Martin to the side when Diana comes calling. Diana relies on attachment to others to stay in existence, but the relationship between Diana and Sophie feels disingenuous, considering that while Sophie is established to have emotional issues, she is still together enough to have a fairly functioning family and relationships. So its difficult to remain sympathetic to her struggle. Another nitpicky issue is that once the rules of Diana are established that she lives in darkness characters seem to ignore those facts when even simply entering a room. I get very irritated when a character would walk into a room and didnt make a beeline straight to the light switch, especially after they knew that Diana could be lurking around any corner.

Still, these quibbles may not matter to an audience wanting to have a good, scary time. For stretches of Lights Out, the film delivers on that promise, and the good performances by the actors and the skills that David Sandberg displays in keeping the proceedings intense will win many over. I hope that at the very least Sandberg isnt done with this particular movie monster, because Diana is a new, fun addition to the pantheon of horror monsters.

Source: http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/reviews/704699-lights-out-review

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