![]() While some places in the world are free of basements, most horror movies include at least one section where the main characters are forced down into the depths of their concrete houses, which is where the horror really reaches its peak. Add in an unstoppable knife-wielding murderer or ghost and you’ve got yourself the most terrifying place on Earth outside of Hell or your local high school. Most normal basements are dark, smell terribly musty and old, and are definitely infested with spiders, bugs, rats, and real-life ghosts. However, for as creepy as a dusty attic or a nighttime stroll to the kitchen can be, the most terrifying place inside those homes that have one, is the dreaded basement.īasements are already terrifying enough without seeing them in a horror film. Slasher genre pioneers like Halloween and Black Christmas both go far in illustrating how scary everyday surroundings can become. Sandberg has all of Wan’s gifts for engineering thrills and chills, but his sense of humor and feeling for the human subtext of the fright film might be what saves him from being a one-hit wonder.Yet, even with a seemingly endless selection of locales to terrorize a band of unsuspecting teens, most horror movies all seem to end up choosing the comforts of our homes to infect with their aliens, demons, ghosts, and psychos. It amounts to a semi-visible slapstick routine. Yes, it’s terrifying, but it’s also funny: In one standout scene, Rebecca’s hapless boyfriend is chased from the house to the driveway, repeatedly saving himself just in time with a series of light-emitting gadgets, from his cell phone to his car’s headlights. As in the short, the ghost disappears in the light and reappears in the dark, and Sandberg uses this simple trick in a number of clever ways. Lights Out truly shines in the staging of its scare sequences. But the supernatural custody battle between Rebecca and Sophie over Martin is handled with more realism and sensitivity than is typically found in boilerplate horror. ![]() The story of her relationship with the ghost, told in an obligatory archival-research montage, veers into high camp. The hauntings intensify when Sophie feels abandoned, whether by her children’s absent fathers or her children themselves. The film continuously makes fun of slasher movie tropes while. It's impressive how scary Scream can be, as it's essentially a satire movie as much as it is a horror movie. Sophie spends her nights talking to shadows, which conceal the movie’s real star, a spectral crone with stringy hair and clicking fingernails who wants Sophie all to herself. Scream (1996) Movies that are based on the dark and play on audiences' nyctophobia commonly involve ghouls or monsters of some sort, but Scream is a self-aware slasher movie. You could have a horror movie with a bright setting but it reduces the impact. Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) is drawn back to her family home because her unstable mother, Sophie (Maria Bello), appears to be terrorizing Rebecca’s much younger half-brother, Martin (Gabriel Bateman). Horror movies are very reliant on mood and lighting to stage their settings. ![]() Taking a page out of the Freudian playbook, Sandberg and screenwriter Eric Heisserer fleshed out the short’s minimal premise into a story of a broken family haunted by the fear of abandonment. The unconscious purpose of this repetitive play, Freud said, was to gain a sense of control over the trauma of his single mother’s frequent absences. There’s plenty here for both the bloodhounds and those who prefer less gory frights. One thinks of the childhood game analyzed by Sigmund Freud, in which his grandson alternately hides and reveals a toy from behind the furniture. Below, we present 24 home-invasion movies to ensure that you don’t sleep soundly until Christmas. It’s a minor masterpiece of horror filmmaking reduced to its cinematic essence. Off: there again, a little closer this time. A group of teenagers battle a horde of zombies and evil creatures that live underneath a graveyard. With Brent Ritter, Bettina Julius, Clayton A. Switching the lights back on makes her disappear. Curse of the Blue Lights: Directed by John Henry Johnson. From the other end of a dark hallway, she makes out the silhouette of a hunched woman by her closet. Alone in an apartment, Losten switches off the lights on her way to bed. If you haven’t seen the 2013 short, I suggest avoiding it if you’re easily scared. While it’s no The Babadook, Lights Out is an efficient haunted-house thriller, as witty and charming as it is spooky. Wan was impressed enough to help Sandberg develop his dialogue-free short into a major studio film, and New Line Cinema’s faith was justified. After Sandberg put a no-budget short starring his wife, Lotta Losten, on YouTube, it went viral, attracting the attention of horror maven James Wan ( Saw, The Conjuring). ![]() Sandberg, is the stuff of indie auteur fantasy. The story behind Lights Out, the surprisingly effective first feature film by David F.
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