Monday, September 09, 2024

Don't Turn Out The Lights (2024)

The trouble with genre horror movies is so often that whilst they openly tease so many possible explanations for what's happening to a given group of unlikeable 'teens', the resolution, when it comes, always feels a bit disappointing.

So here Andy Fickman gives us instead something far more unsettled (perhaps in the hope that jaded audiences will find this more unsettling), and not in the Henry James ambiguity kind of way either, rather a constant stream of ill-defined potentialities, up to and including the final shot.
Overall this results in an exploration of how abnormal or paranormal events are interpreted by those on the sharp end of them, rather than of these happenings themselves.

Does it work? Kind of. Something both formulaic and yet lacking that creeping expectation that habitually rides with these formulas is gripping, if ultimately imprecise in its narrative payload.
 
(The title seems to be an instruction to home viewers rather than a reference to anything that occurs on screen.) 

 

 

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