Excellent jump scares forgettable characters but Palmer is great!

| Aug 7, 2023

It does employ a few all-too-familiar tricks, but they certainly don’t undercut the many things the film deserves credit for.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 23, 2022

While Sandberg orchestrates a few sequences of heavy tension, Lights Out doesnt quite click or retain a place in our minds after the end credits.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 11, 2022

What Lights Out desperately needs is someone with a vision for the film, not just a career.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 3, 2022

It is a simple story but it's told in the super original way.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 30, 2021

Rachel Sennott's face possesses an incredible volumetric capacity for discomfort. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 30, 2021

A nicely performed ray of genre with a few story problems that will leave some audience members in the dark.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 4, 2021

There have been movies in the past that played with Nyctophobia, a severe fear of the dark, but I haven't seen one that truly terrified me as much as Lights Out.

| Jan 2, 2021

As generally inconsequential as Lights Out is, it ultimately leaves a bad taste with its dismissive portrayal of mental illness.

| Original Score: C | Jul 3, 2020

Simple functionality is a smart move. To try and dig too deeply or add any class to the proceedings would miss the point of it all. Lights Out holds no illusions as to what it wants or needs to be, keeping things to a tight 81 minutes.

| Mar 31, 2020

Transcends the genre thanks to ingenuity, technical polish and hair-raising terror.

| Nov 3, 2019

It uses some good old fashioned jump scares and a tense atmosphere to make a really effective scary movie.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 7, 2019

My overall reaction to the film teetered on the fence between "I kinda liked it" and outright dislike. I actually expected a more out-there story instead of a slightly mushy one about a family in turmoil.

| May 17, 2019

Lights Out manages to provide story and scares in roughly equal measure; it's the ideal ratio for creating quality horror and one that rarely gets struck.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 16, 2019

It seems to rely way too much on the horror genre cliche handbook, which ultimately leaves the tension at a minimum when it should have been much more.

| Original Score: C- | Jan 15, 2019

The movie is believable and the characters are very convincing. I have to admit that I definitely screamed and jumped with the rest of them.

| Nov 13, 2018

...challenging and imaginative. Spicer's experimental lighting gives 'Lights Out' its gripping sheen. Overall, Sandberg's menacing mechanism of a movie certainly forces the shaky hand of its skeptical audience to snuggle up to the nearest light switch.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 9, 2018

Lights Out is a simply scary story that will have you sleeping with the light on. It isn't the most intricate plot, but you have to take it for what it is.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 2, 2018

Lights Out is a fun little film with a nice amount of depth that you don't usually find in many mainstream horror films nowadays.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 31, 2018

It would be a mistake to overstate the merits of Lights Out. However, it is everything we hope a summer horror movie will be: fright-filled, fun and inventive.

| Original Score: B+ | Oct 23, 2018