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"Lights Out" is a ruthlessly efficient suspense thriller, a bare-bones production that does its business without lingering unnecessarily.
Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) is a commitment-averse rocker who gets an unexpected call from her 10-year-old half-brother, Martin (Gabriel Bateman), at school, where he keeps falling asleep in class. Turns out Martin doesn't sleep at night, and keeps the lights on, because their manic-depressive mother, Sophia (Maria Bello), is off her meds. She seems to be talking to Diana, an unseen presence linked, Rebecca learns, to her childhood stint at a mental hospital. Diana only appears in the shadows and disappears whenever the lights are turned on.
Director David F. Sandberg, adapting his 2-minute short (viewable on YouTube), and screenwriter Eric Heisserer (who wrote the reboots of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "The Thing") mine some solidly spooky scenes out of the simple premise of a baddie that only appears in darkness, and the casting of Bello and Palmer as mother and daughter is inspired.
Except for a final moment that's unsettling in all the wrong ways, "Lights Out" is a thriller that gets the job done.
'Lights Out'
Opens Friday, July 22, in theaters everywhere; rated PG-13 for terror throughout, violence including disturbing images, some thematic material and brief drug content; 81 minutes.