The victim’s stepdaughter, Rebecca (Teresa Palmer), has long since fled her dysfunctional family home, becoming so resistant to commitment that she refuses to allow her boyfriend Bret (Alexander DiPersia) to leave so much as a sock in her apartment. It ends with the factory’s owner (Billy Burke) getting killed and news of his death reaching a family that isn’t as surprised to hear about it as you’d think. The terrific opening sequence, set in a mannequin factory after dark, is a sustained mini-masterpiece of suspense, bringing back the actress (Lotta Losten, the director’s wife) from the short for what amounts to another standalone gem. They’ve made a film that’s just sophisticated enough to wither under the scrutiny its psychodrama inspires. On the other hand, the requisite expansion introduces a tortured, confusing story of mental illness and Hitchcockian doubles that Sandberg and Heisserer never straighten out satisfactorily.
Now, courtesy of producer James Wan ( Saw, The Conjuring), Sandberg and his screenwriter, Eric Heisserer, have the difficult task of extending three minutes into 81 without exhausting a smart concept or losing the snap of a compact “Boo!” The brevity of the feature-length Lights Out helps enormously, because it carries the minimalist spirit of the short, refusing to overwork what’s essentially the horror equivalent of a one-joke comedy. Beyond the premise, what’s impressive about the short is Sandberg’s efficiency and wit as a shock artist, the way he’s able to establish the rules without exposition and deliver a couple of strong jolts before cutting to black. In this scenario, pockets of illumination act like small islands in shark-infested waters - dip a toe in the current and it’s liable to get bitten off. The hook of Sandberg’s short is that the threat moves in the shadows, attacking only when there’s no light source around it. Sandberg’s original short film, “ Lights Out,” toys cleverly with one of the fundamental precepts of horror (and of being scared, period): That something out there, in the dark, is waiting to harm us. In less than three nearly wordless minutes, David F.
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