Lights Out (2016) on Netflix
PG-1320161h 21mDramaHorrorMysteryThriller
Martin stops sleeping after hearing his mother Sophie talk to a friend named Diana in the dark. Stepsister Rebecca takes him in, and a figure that moves only in darkness appears there.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.3/10154,249 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes76%
Trailer
Plot summary
Paul, locking up a factory after hours, comes across a figure that seems able to move only in darkness. Days later his son Martin hears his mother, Sophie, talking in the dark to someone called Diana, and he stops sleeping. When the school cannot reach Sophie, it calls Martin's stepsister Rebecca, who is questioned about Martin's home life by a Child Protective Services agent. Rebecca finds that Sophie has stopped taking her medication and takes Martin to her apartment above a tattoo parlor. That night the sign outside flickers, and a crouched figure appears on her floor whenever the light goes out.
Cast
Show all 14 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Lights Out (2016)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- David F. Sandberg had never worked with a film crew or even visited a film set before directing Lights Out, and had to ask the first assistant director, "So when do I say action?"
- Diana's appearances and disappearances were mostly a split-screen trick, the same one used in the original short: scenes were shot with her in frame and again without her, then joined, Sandberg explained.
- Sandberg and his wife Lotta Losten made the original short film for a competition; it did not win, but it went viral and so many agents contacted Sandberg that he built a spreadsheet to track them all.
SPOILER
David F. Sandberg shot a second ending in which Martin becomes depressed and Diana comes back once more before she is killed, but test audiences concluded that Sophie's sacrifice would have been in vain.- Sandberg based Rebecca on a real girl he knew who suffered from depression and self-harm, which is why the character has scars on her arms.
- Moving to Hollywood meant Lotta Losten quit her day job, and the couple could not rent an apartment because they had no US credit score, so they rented Airbnbs by the month.
- Critics argued the film's ending promoted suicide, which distressed director David F. Sandberg, who had wanted to make a film about depression, having suffered from it himself and lost a friend to suicide.
