DIANA FROM LIGHTS OUT MOVIE
DIANA FROM LIGHTS OUT SERIES

DIANA FROM LIGHTS OUT MOVIE

If I wanted to watch a movie about depression, IвЂ™d watch any movie by Alexander Payne. Why canвЂ™t she just be a violent, possessive ghost? Simple evil is what we need now, especially since horror directors are fixated on these oh-so-serious monster metaphors that horror fans donвЂ™t want or need. Diana as a metaphor for depression doesnвЂ™t make the movie any scarier. There she learns that Diana only appears when Sophie doesnвЂ™t take her anti-depressants, such as when her first husband left, or when her second husband was killed (by Diana). As DianaвЂ™s hold on Sophie grows stronger, Rebecca moves back into her motherвЂ™s house in an attempt to help her.

Sandberg forces Diana into a metaphor that the movie doesnвЂ™t need. It Follows did it, The Babadook did it, and evenВ in some ways The WitchВ did it, and now so did Lights Out. Sandberg could have taken his impossible premise and run with it, but he fell into what I consider the second problem that modern horror movie directors face: the need to make every monster into a metaphor. The backstory is wholly unnecessary, but in its defense, it reads with the same lovable zaninessВ as a five minute SupernaturalВ episode. Now she lingers in SophieвЂ™s home, killing anyone who tries to get rid of her. When Sophie eventually left, Diana was killed in an experiment designed to treat her of her light- aversion, but ended up frying her instead. She grew possessive of Sophie, who was being treated for depression, and would infect her mind with negativity to keep her in the hospital.

DIANA FROM LIGHTS OUT SERIES

Through a series of convenient psychiatric records and tapes, we discover that Diana was a mental patient who had been kept in a basement for thirteen years and developed a toxic allergy to light. HereвЂ™s where the cheese factor comes in because writer / director David Sandberg attempts to explain every element of Diana, even where it makes no sense. If horror movies these days have any problem, itвЂ™s the fact that they feel compelled to add a backstory, even when itвЂ™s as unnecessary as DianaвЂ™s in Lights Out. I didnвЂ™t need her backstory to feel uneasy when Sophie utters a frightened, desperate plea to a dark closet, or when Diana intrudes on a tense family movie night to fling Martin to the ground and drag Sophie away. Sure, theyвЂ™re mostly jump scares, which aim to frighten horror newbies (like the gaggle of teenage girls behind me who would emit 15 second long screeches at even a glimpse of Diana), but theyвЂ™re not cheap jump scares, since Diana, in essence, is terrifying. As Diana appears again and again, frightening a precocious Martin, or appearing in RebeccaвЂ™s red-lit loft, the scares keep coming. A creature who can appear only in the dark and create its own darkness plays on humanityвЂ™s most primal fear. Without a backstory, or at this point even a name, the creature is is simple, yet terrifying.

My take: Lights OutВ focuses on the scares from the first scene of the movie, which introduces us to Diana through the lens of SophieвЂ™s doomed husband. In order to take care of Martin, Rebecca must confront the malevolent force that is controlling her mother and destroy it, or risk losing her mother and Martin forever. Frightened of Diana, a violent apparition who can appear only in the dark, Martin tries to live with Rebecca and her would-be boyfriend Bret, but is stopped by Child Protective Services. She keeps the house in total darkness and spends her nights talking to an unseen figure named Diana. After SophieвЂ™s new husband dies in a mysterious accident, Sophie falls into a deep depression. Synopsis: Rebellious punk Rebecca had drifted apart from her mother Sophie when she remarried and had a son, Martin. There are some cheesy factors that whiff of other movies, which I will get into later, but IвЂ™m a firm believer that a little bit of silly pseudoscience can propel the plot of a horror movie in ways that serious, scientific reality canвЂ™t. As a dedicated fan of horror, it satisfied my need for a good, scary story and subverted some tired stereotypes. Hello, everyone! I watched the much anticipated Lights OutВ movie a few days ago and honestly loved it.

Diana from lights out