Lights Out (2016) is more than a ghost story, it's a haunting metaphor for depression, grief, and mental illness. We break down the hidden meaning, the vampire ghost theory, and what a sequel universe could look like, with guest and creative professional Steve Franco. If you love horror movie explanations, film theory, and deep dives into underrated films, this episode is for you.
Is the creature in Lights Out a ghost that hides in the dark or is it something much more unsettling? Creative professional Steve Franco joins to dig into what makes this 2016 horror film more than a simple monster movie.
In this episode:
Timestamps:
Check out the 3 min Swedish short film that started it all. Lights Out - Who's There (2013) on Vimeo
Introduction
It didn't really make it more scary, it made it a little less scary, which made the whole Blacklight thing sort of doubly problematic.
Yeah, it was weird. This physical location, that's more than a haunted house. And is there like a time travel sort of aspect or reincarnation aspect to that place?
I think we've solved the mystery, Scoob.
No, it's my third podcast of the day, so.
Is it really?
No, I'm joking.
It's my first podcast ever.
Welcome to the podcast, where we talk about the big ideas behind fiction projects of all different kinds. Books, TV shows, movies, video games, nothing's off limits. My guest today is Steve Franco, a creative professional and a long time friend.
So Steve, thank you for being on the podcast.
Thanks for having me.
So are you working on any creative projects right now?
Right now, working with a friend of mine, launching health and fitness, online service, newsletter sort of thing. But that's really the big creative thing that I'm working on right now.
What do you think is one of the most or more creative parts of that for you?
For me, it's the design part. I love anything typography, branding, design, that sort of thing. I like getting involved in that, but it's also the psychology of it, right?
It's the psychology of marketing. Like what's really going to resonate with the audience? It's probably the things that I like the most out of it.
Obviously, you got to get customers and get a business going, but I really get into that. I think getting to the bottom of the audience is the first thing you really need to do.
I think going through a long testing phase of that is really important to figure out. Because a lot of times, what you think is important or who the audience actually is, is very different than how you set things up.
It's a health and fitness website. You're trying to get anything like that going. Maybe your audience is older women, 60 plus, but you're marketing more towards young guys who are going to the gym every day.
It's going to be a really big disconnect, so you're never going to get the messaging right. I think it's really important to really understand the audience before you do an official launch and keep things in beta.
2:28
Lights Out Film Analysis
So a lot of that, I think, relates in a surprisingly direct way to today's topic, which is the spectacular supernatural film from 2016, Lights Out.
So tell me, have you seen Lights Out, Steve?
I did. I saw it in its entirety. I think I'd get past the first 10 minutes, but I actually liked it.
I thought it was a pretty interesting movie. I mean, we can get into it, but it was simplistic in some ways, but then after I thought about it during the week, I really thought I can see why you chose it, and we can talk about that later too.
Oh, that's excellent. Yeah, I think that's a really good way to describe this movie, right? Initially, it seems like the concept is kind of paper thin.
Yeah. And as you were saying, you weren't sure you get through the first 10 minutes. And one of the interesting things about this project that I wanted to talk to you about is the fact that it started as like a three-minute short film.
So the director submitted it, he and his wife, that's his wife in the short film. It's available on YouTube. I'll throw the link into the show notes, but it's a three-minute short film.
It's very similar concept, almost identical. He shopped it around some festivals. I think he got second place in one.
Then he posted it on YouTube and Vimeo. And as a result, was flooded with agents contacting him to buy the rights, to get him to develop it. And ultimately you get what we saw in 2016.
Yeah, it's interesting.
It's like the family drama aspect of it. You know, the kids and the mom really trying to figure things out. And as the story just kind of evolves, you kind of get a sense of, you know, obviously you get a sense of that dread, the horror element.
It's also interesting the way like their dynamic with like her being mentally ill and abandoning the kids and them trying to connect with her and how that kind of doesn't go away throughout the whole film, which I thought was a really, a really good
thing. They didn't just drop it and then turn it into a straight horror movie, which I thought was pretty interesting.
That's a really good point. I know the director was trying to capture depression and the impact on the family.
And it sounds like, at least in your opinion, that he did that effectively or at least reasonably effectively, that you could tell there was more to it than just the core concept is we're going to talk about in a minute.
Especially for a movie that wasn't even an hour and a half long, I believe. I think it's over now. Yeah, he got a lot in there without turning it into like your typical like a horror movie, you know, slasher type film or ghost story.
Yeah.
5:01
The Ghost in Darkness
The core concept, as I understand it, it's a ghost that can only hurt people in the dark. So when there's regular light, whether it's natural light or artificial light, it's not visible. It's completely intangible.
It's apparently there, but it can't harm you. You can't interact with it in any way, and it can't interact with you.
Right?
So that's the concept. If you forget about how the actual movie was executed, how the concept was played out and executed in a film, if someone pitched that concept to you, how would you react?
It's so simplistic that I don't think it could be turned into an effective movie, because the tenet of every horror movie, right, is that everything's happening in the dark. Right? Right.
They always take place in the dark. Well, not always, but most horror movies take place in the dark. So just having that be like a one trick pony to me.
It would just seem too basic to turn it into a full length feature. You'd need something else, right?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's paper thin. You know, it's not that different from most ghost stories, because it's a ghost story, right?
It's a monster movie, but it's like 90 percent, in my opinion, ghost story and like 10 percent monster movie. You know, most ghosts really just vanish when you turn the lights on anyway.
Yeah. Or you wouldn't have many horror movies.
Exactly. And also, I wonder if having a short film that kind of played out the concept from start to finish. And at some point, you should check it out.
But it basically just has a woman, there's a hallway, she's turning lights off and on, there's a shadow of a person appearing, disappearing. And then it kind of ends with this creature, like appearing in the light and then turning off the light.
So it's a slightly different concept than this creature was using the dark, but it wasn't limited to the dark.
I saw that short film, it was really big online.
That's right.
And people were being really scared. The sound design was really good. She's just in her bedroom or something, right?
That's right.
I didn't realize that this was the short film that was based on.
It absolutely is.
And what's interesting is on one hand, you have the reaction that I would imagine a lot of producers and directors would have and, you know, Hollywood people or just anyone. There's not much to that. You kind of covered it, you know?
Right.
Then on the other hand, there's like seven million views.
You know what I mean? There's like, right.
So something, something's going on.
Right. So yeah, I think that's really interesting. I think you talked a little bit about execution, but do you feel like they executed the idea well throughout the movie?
I think they did.
I mean, I think in the beginning, I wasn't so sure what was going to happen, but I thought as the movie progressed, there was that constant dredd that was happening.
There were certain parts that I thought, this is kind of far-fetched in the sense that can't the ghost just kind of cut the electrical wires to the house or whatever and just have it be pitch black all the time?
Yeah.
But, you know, suspension of disbelief, right? I thought it was really interesting the fact that the way they were playing with those hallway lights in the beginning, I thought that was really clever and it was really scary.
The way the lighting was set up in a realistic way in that, I guess, mannequin factory. They never really got into what that was. They got like a sound stage or backstage at a theater.
I mean, like that whole scene in the beginning with the dad.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I don't think they said it seemed like it was some sort of warehouse, but why they would have a bunch of mannequins placed out was, you know, weird, right?
Yeah.
Reenacting the Civil War or something.
But I thought it was really cool, like the way that there were those spotlights and how they were set up and how as the lights went off, the creature just got closer and closer and closer.
And then they had the typical fall scene where the guy's running and falls for no reason, which is really good too.
I thought it was really funny in the fact that like the ghost seems to play with the electrical system in certain key points, but other times not so much. You know, I thought that was pretty funny. Yeah.
Well, you bring up a couple of really interesting points, right?
The first one is the ghost's motivations are it's not Jaws. You know what I mean? It's not jumping out of the water trying to kill people every chance it gets.
It's toying with them. It seems almost at times like we're supposed to think that the ghost is debating whether it's going to kill people or not, or if it's itself sometimes more unhinged than other times.
Yeah, I thought that it was unpredictable in the way that it was acting out. And it seemed like once the characters know or that the daughter really knows what the back story is, the behavior seems to change of the ghost.
Yes.
Right? Which, I mean, it actually ended up working for me anyway. Like, I thought that it was a part of the movie that was interesting.
The fact that now you knew so much more information and you understood those motivations much more.
And I thought that was going to like take away from the movie, but I thought I'd added to it, you know, the relationship between that ghost and the mom. And how that played out and how mental illness plays into that.
And how they kind of balance the whole mental illness idea with a physical ghost manifestation, kind of like what The Shining did. Or you don't really know, but in this case, they took that ghost and really turned it into something.
When in The Shining, it was like more obtuse, how that, you know, the hotel was really taking over his mind. And at the end, you're not really sure like what's going on with that hotel, right? It's a haunted hotel.
Is it just driving him completely insane and everyone around it insane? It's causing all kinds of chaos, but they leave it very much like open to interpretation. Like the longer you stay in it, the more you get haunted by it.
And I thought this was really interesting because it took the whole mental illness aspect. The longer she stayed in it, the more that creature became tied into her and her family.
You know, I guess that's what happens when you start with sort of a paper thin concept that can be played out in a three-minute short video.
Right.
You know, or short film. You have to add layers, and that's one way to add layers is to play around with motivation and to have the character, the creature, it's a character, like escalate at times and be somewhat unpredictable, like you said.
So I think that was a really smart move in terms of taking, in developing a concept that is really thin into a watchable moving.
Yeah.
And I also liked, you mentioned the opening sequence in the mannequin factory, I'm going to say, or warehouse.
Mannequin Depot.
Yes, mannequin, there's a lot of mannequin depots around. I don't know why we're acting like that's a weird thing. You can't put them on their side.
They're mannequins.
They're gonna stand them up somewhere.
That's right. Need a lot of headspace. So I thought that particular sequence did a better than average job of establishing the creature, the threat.
Yeah, it was a great intro.
I thought the sound design was good. Obviously the lighting design was good. Special effects, pretty solid, I thought, overall in this movie.
12:00
Unraveling the Creature
So there are a couple other things about this concept that perplexed me a little bit, right?
So as I said, the core concept is really just a ghost that appears only in the dark and can only harm you in the dark and in the light, it cannot touch you or harm you. But one aspect of it that I thought was very obscured was its psychic powers.
So do you think this thing had psychic powers or not?
Very good question, because I was going to ask another question, too bad question.
Okay, let's move on.
Is it a ghost or is it like a physical manifestation of what's in that woman's mind? Well, I was going back and forth on the whole time. As soon as you realize that she's communicating with it, kind of bringing it to life.
And when she takes, I guess, her antipsychotics or her medication, ready to tone it down. So she creating this creature and manifesting it. Is that what we're supposed to think?
Or is it a traditional ghost that's just popping up when she's at her weakest state and then chasing everybody around? Like, he couldn't handle them when she was strong.
That's a really good question. That did not occur to me at all. I thought when they talk about the history of the girl, that is supposed to be this thing.
I thought when they were talking about how she was found in a basement, her dad was, I guess, dead and she was living in the dark in this basement by herself.
And then they brought her to the like mental health facility or whatever that nightmare place was supposed to be. And then she died, right? And I thought that was sort of saying she was a separate person.
But when she was at the facility, she sort of bonded and latched on to the mother when she was young.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think it just adds another good question to the whole movie. The fact that when she kills herself, she instantly disappears.
Like it was created by her. Like the memory of her as a kid was that creature. And when there's no memories left, she doesn't exist.
Yeah, that's an interesting read of it, you know.
So it's like one way to read it is there were two girls originally. And they both they bonded in this facility because they both had some paranormal psychic element to them. Or the just the mother character did.
And she sort of absorbed or, you know, she's the one who linked with that other girl, the dark haired girl, right? And then the dark haired girl presumably died or vanished or never existed, right?
And then as an adult, the mother just keeps recreating a version of her or won't let her spirit pass.
That's a good point.
That's really interesting, right? The way I watched it, the way I read it initially was the mom was sort of innocent. She was just like a normal human little girl who was depressed.
And this other creature who for some reason can't be exposed to light and has some weird undefined psychic ability kind of latched on to her. And then when she was killed, her spirit now remains tied to that woman.
I thought that was the intended read of it.
Yeah, it might be. It could be a really in one of those movies that's the intended read is very straightforward. You know, there's a lot of versions of it, kind of like, what's that movie with Jake Gyllenhaal?
I don't think he's been in any movie.
That's right.
He doesn't act, does he? I think so. Am I thinking the wrong Gyllenhaal?
Are you talking about the one where he time travels on a train or?
The one where he time travels with that weird rabbit.
Donnie Darko.
Donnie Darko.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Another movie that has many, many interpretations, and I think it was made in a way that that leaves you open to it, but their intention was a lot more simplistic.
Like, oh, we're going to put this weird thing here, or this weird tot in this wormhole into the movie, and just kind of throw everyone for a loop in terms of what this is supposed to mean or not mean.
That's an excellent parallel analogy, yeah.
So I don't know with this one. I mean, that's why it's an interesting movie, I think, because it seems like such a simplistic horror movie, but then there's so much more to it.
I like the relationship between the daughter and the mom, and the kid and the mom. I actually like that. I thought the boyfriend was kind of just like a throwaway character.
Like a nice guy, hangs out, wants to be with her, and she doesn't want him.
Yeah, I think he was supposed to be there to demonstrate her arc, right? Like, so she learns to connect again, and trust, and maybe there are themes of connection in this story, you know, of different kinds.
But I felt like that was kind of his purpose, and it was appropriate for him to kind of vanish during the finale.
I thought he was coming back. Did you think he was coming back?
I did. Yeah, I figured he was. Because it seemed to, contrary to the character's development, for her to have been right in, like, her first scene when she's like, you're not spending the night, right?
You know?
The stock scene?
Exactly.
That was so silly.
Yeah.
So funny.
So I figured somehow he needed to come back. But I like how he didn't save the day, which would have been a sloppier way to do that.
He sent the cops in.
And they didn't save the day either.
They definitely did not save the day or the night.
So I did like that. But so I think one of the interesting aspects of this is what is this creature?
And I think you've already started addressing that by saying she might be a psychic manifestation of the depressed mom, which I thought was really good. That's a really good interpretation and idea.
But for me, if you go with the more simplistic or what I thought was the more sort of surface level interpretation of this is an unusual human who now is an unusual ghost, then the question quickly becomes, what is she?
Because when they point light at her, she physically burned.
Right.
Which was weird. Yes. Or is she a physical being sometimes when she feels comfortable and is she more of a ghost that can kind of travel through walls, et cetera?
Well, but so the implication I thought was she was a human girl who was tangible, but she had some weird and I don't even think they tried to name it or anything, but some bizarre skin condition and some bizarre psychological condition, neither of
which did they attempt to describe. The thing that really I feel like is the biggest issue I had with this film, the thing that kind of pulled me out of the story the most and that I still struggle with is this experimental light therapy, giant
quotation marks that they used to, again, giant quotation marks cure her. We know light burns her. So what if more light?
It got out of control like it always does in those experiments.
There's no off switch. Yeah, exactly.
Turn it off and they're like, oh, now she's up.
Did you mean?
Yeah. Whoops, what? I can't hear you.
It's too bright in here.
I can't hear what you're saying. And so then she banishes?
Yeah, I'm not. She burned into the chair, I guess.
Light doesn't do that. You know what I mean? Like if it's got heat with it, sure.
You know, ghosts aren't real too.
That's fair.
She seems like she was supposed to be something weird. The ghost they're dealing with might be like the ghost of a vampire.
Yeah.
Was she originally the undead?
That's the question. She could have been, right? That's really interesting.
Yeah. Was she a vampire from the get-go?
The vampire ghost.
Vampire ghost.
I think we saw it.
That's the sequel. Vampire ghost on the next episode.
I think we've solved the mystery, Scoob.
I hadn't thought about that one. She was a weird girl, but now that you say that she could be like an ancient vampire, that would make more sense. Who's also a ghost?
Vampires have sort of vague, undefined psychic powers.
True.
So, that could explain how it connected to this woman.
Like, it bonded with this other girl, and then it was destroyed, but then it psychically remained bonded to her, which would also, to me, explain why, as a ghost, it had like a distorted body, with those weird long hands and stuff.
Kind of like the vampire in, like, Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. It kind of stretches hands, you know?
To be clear, I like your interpretation, like, a million times better than mine.
But the ghost of the vampire thing could work. I mean, I think it would be a good prequel.
Interesting.
It would be an interesting movie. Like, them as kids, or how she, maybe she was, like, possessed, right? By, like, the ghost of a vampire somehow.
Oh, wow.
And then that starts this whole thing.
Maybe this has been happening for centuries, you know, this type of possession.
You know, that's a really interesting point. Do you know what other movies David Sandberg, the director of this film, has directed?
I do not, no.
One of his movies is The Conjuring.
Really?
Yeah. Oh, wow.
That's a great movie.
It is. And what you just said fits pretty nicely in that conjuring style of creating a universe.
Right.
Right. I'm not saying it fits in that universe as much.
Maybe it would with a little tweaking, but it definitely doing the prequel idea, where you kind of follow immortal creatures, supernatural creatures over time, and how they interact with people in unusual ways, right?
That's pretty much what that universe is about.
Right. Like, is that insidious? That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that would be pretty interesting. Like how that would come about. How was the original vampire created?
Always loved those origin stories. And then what ended up happening? It's kind of like Chucky.
It's kind of like that Chucky vibe.
Doesn't everything just go back to that Chucky vibe in the end?
Back to Chucky.
I think actually now that you, the direction you're going in, I think broadens the concept significantly enough that it could be sort of fertile ground or a foundation for several different films.
Oh yeah, for sure. That mental institution, and that's a whole movie right there.
Yeah, what were they doing? They're going to teach people with light.
Oh, they're not good. What are you all allergic to? Pollin.
Here's some pollin. Next, what are you allergic to?
Oh, you're here because your dad was an alcoholic? Alcohol.
Isn't that exposure therapy?
Minus the therapy part of it, yeah.
Just exposure.
Yes, that's the technical term. You're just exposing them to a toxin. Are you afraid of fire, scarecrow?
Yeah, that would be an interesting where all of their treatments are just totally awful and turn people into horrible creatures.
That's the whole universe.
22:58
Future Film Ideas
Well, I'm glad you brought all that up because one of the things I wanted to talk about is where you would go with this idea.
There was no sequel. There was one in development for a while. As you said, I think it's a good enough movie that a sequel is a no-brainer.
You can make a sequel for less than they probably made this movie if you had to. And it's got a somewhat recognizable name in the fact that there is another movie and short film that exists, both with Lights Out as their name.
And the director has some other projects. But I'm just really surprised that they didn't continue. But it sounds like you would go with, you know, sort of going back and doing prequels.
But also, I think you were interested in the angle of mental health and how this creature represents things. It might be a manifestation of them.
Yeah, I was interested in that, I think, because I mentioned The Shining, right? That whole idea behind that movie is so fascinating to me. There's this physical location that's more than a haunted house.
And is there like a time travel sort of aspect or reincarnation aspect to that place? At least in the movie, the way they did it. I haven't read the book.
But yeah, in this case, the whole idea that like your mind could physically manifest something, I know is really interesting in how it can kind of become, for lack of a better word, insidious, right?
Like it becomes so entrenched in your mental illness, and it just kind of gets power off of it. I think that the concept is really interesting.
And what it does to your family.
Like there's reverberations for sure.
Of very specific kinds.
Yeah. It's interesting, though, like how they didn't seem to leave it open ended. Like I thought they would really leave it open ended.
Like the whole just creature dead at the end, was kind of weird to me. I thought they were going to leave it open. Maybe like it grabs on to the daughter or the kid somehow.
You know, but maybe that was like too cheesy to do it that way. But something that would kind of show that she was still around. Looking for a sequel.
Well, I think the big open ended part is, did the girl, the daughter, did she marry her boyfriend or not?
They should have ended it with a wedding.
Did she open up a new drawer for her? You only got that one drawer now. What's happening?
Did they get matching goth tattoos?
Venge sevenfold, I think.
Forum tattoos.
So another way to go or building on what you're saying, a way to go with sequels, if you don't do prequels or you do both, we'll treat it like the Conjuring universe and go in both directions.
But if you did sequels, you don't have to follow the same creature with the same rules.
If this movie represents and this creature, this vampire ghost represents depression, then you could create something very different that represented anxiety and show how that affects a family differently.
You could create another creature in another film with completely different rules and a different impact that represents like psychosis.
Yeah.
Or another one that represents obsessive compulsive disorder. And just show the impact on the family. In depression, it pushes away the men who love her.
It destabilizes and breaks the family as a result. It pushes, you know, forces the kids to bond with each other because mom can't take care of herself and can't take care of them.
And it may, it parentifies the kids and they have to grow up too quickly.
But if you did anxiety and you visualized that somehow in a creature that played by different rules and had different limitations, you know, that was frenetic or overwhelming or distracted you at times when you needed to focus and things like that
It's kind of like haunting a pill house, how it destabilizes the whole family, the haunting of that.
It's similar, the concept is similar, but because it was really like a family drama more than just a horror movie or miniseries. But yeah, I mean, it's really interesting.
It's interesting to see how the son versus the daughter, how they deal with it. One can't leave mom and the other one's willing to leave mom right away.
Yeah, some of that might be their age, but I think it also represented how people react to a parent who's emotionally unstable.
Right.
There was some good work in this film. I think it's an easily looked over movie because of the splash that it didn't make in the box office. And maybe that's because of the concept.
It seems like I think probably people watch a trailer and they thought, oh, I get what the concept is. And then they go in and they're not really interested in depression. They're not really interested in his family dynamics as much.
They're interested in being afraid of a ghost. And it's a little bit of a one trick ghost.
And there wasn't there weren't any big stars in it either.
That's often OK with horror. But yeah, that might have helped. And I thought there were some things that muddied the concept a little too much, like this whole blacklight thing.
Right.
Yeah, it was kind of unnecessary. And the characters are kind of silly in the fact that they're not trying to find like some kind of axe or something to knock the door down, you know? The door closed.
They're like, oh, we can't get out. It's locked. OK.
We're just going to hang out down here for a while.
At that point in the film, it seemed odd that the creature, the vampire ghost or whatever would want to trap them and not kill them. Sometimes it seemed like it was just trying to scare them.
And sometimes it seemed like it was trying to control itself, but it couldn't, like when it was on the couch and looking at the little boy, right? And other times it seemed like it was straight up murderous.
No, it was going coming at them as fast as it could with giant spaghetti claws. And that's it. But then five minutes later, it's like, aha, I locked you in a basement.
Yeah, just stay down there.
Yeah, just don't go through my stuff, you know?
That's so weird.
What was the deal with that basement with all the writing on the wall? I didn't really understand. Is that where she was kept?
I was a little confused by that as well.
I think it was supposed to be this really emotionally impactful moment where you realize that this little girl has been living in this basement. She's always around, but she can only be seen in the dark.
So she's been living in this house for decades, presumably, just like she did when they found her in the basement originally.
And so it's supposed to kind of feel sorry for and also be really creeped out that there was this creature living in their basement all this time. But it's supposed to be living there for decades, and it's just been scratching things in the wall.
There was a lot about that that was very confusing, and it was a weird time to interject it, I thought, in the story.
Yeah, it was really weird. I thought the other weird part was killing the dads, the two dads, right? The dad and the stepdad.
They eluded to the fact that they were trying to get her mentally healthy. And I guess when she's mentally healthy, she isn't friends with that little girl at all.
Yeah, or she can't see it. It's only visible if you're depressed or you have a black light. That makes sense.
Yeah.
And that's what I'm talking about, right?
This is what I mean by kind of muddying the waters. You want to develop a concept. You want this ghost to be something more throughout the movie.
Like a great example of this, in my opinion, is the movie Aliens. So they started off with a pretty well-established concept. And it wasn't really that deep or complicated.
There was already a previous movie. You understand what the creature is more or less, right? It's got an egg.
It has one form. And it puts the, you know, embryo in a human or a living thing. It busts out.
Then you've got to deal with this creature. But as you watch the movie Aliens, you start off with that. It's established.
It's cool. Okay, there's a bunch of them. Then you learn that they build a hive.
Then you learn that they bring their kills or their hosts to the hive. Then you learn the next thing, the next thing, there's a queen, you know, the queen lays the eggs. Like the idea of what it is evolved.
It offers new challenges for the characters. In this, I felt like they kind of ran out of that.
Yeah, I would totally agree. I think like, you know, every good story is question, answer, question, and then an answer. And then over and over and over again, until you get to the end.
But with this, not so much. Like, once you figure out, you get those points in the beginning, where is she talking to somebody? That's weird.
Is she talking to herself? No, she's definitely talking to that creature. And then after that, you kind of know what's going on.
And then it's just a matter of defeating it.
Right.
It's a one trick pony in terms of...
That's exactly it, right? So you want the creature to evolve in ways that make it more dangerous or make it harder for the main characters to defeat it.
I mean, what did you think of that weakness? I thought that was a weak weakness.
Blacklight. I think the point of that was so that the audience could see what the thing looks like. And I thought it looked...
You turn on a light and see it, obviously.
So there's one way to do that.
Yes. I think that was... And in the short film, the last frame or the second to last frame is the face of this humanoid, with teeth and red eyes and stuff.
And I think this director wanted to show what this thing looks like. I think it was just kind of gross looking and weird. It didn't really make it more scary.
It made it a little less scary, which made the whole Blacklight thing sort of doubly problematic.
Yeah, it was weird. That whole part was weird to me. The Blacklight and my whole idea that, oh, now we can see it so we can defeat it.
Sort of.
Yeah. We can make it tangible, I guess. Which I don't even know if they tested that, right?
It's not like if you have the light on it, now you can stab it.
Oh, no. Doesn't it burn? Didn't it burn her hand?
The Blacklight?
Oh, did it?
Shined a regular, that's what happened. Okay. So he shines the regular light on it.
Right.
He has the Blacklight on it because he can see it now.
That was the whole idea behind that.
Yeah.
And even now, like we just both watched it, and we're still struggling with that.
I will say, by the way, that reminds me that I thought one of the more interesting ways of using this concept were the muzzle flashes on the pistols.
Oh, yeah. That was cool. I find that really scary.
There's another movie that did that, and I can't remember what it is, where the ghost or the creature moves, kind of like in a strobe pattern, and gets closer and closer and closer. But I like the way they did that. That was cool.
There's a few different movies that have done that, where there's like a fight scene or an attack that occurs with like sort of strobe lights going off, or you see muzzle flashes, you know, as part of it.
But I like this in particular because the enemy that he's shooting at, and the cops couldn't kind of wrap their heads around this, but it ceases to exist the second before the bullet would get there.
You know, I didn't even think of that.
Yeah.
I don't know why I didn't think about it until just now. I thought it was just a way for us to see it, like where it was, but you're right. It's not even there.
The muzzle flash goes off.
Yeah, which I thought was a really interesting way to render guns useless. You know the cops aren't going to save them, but you've never thought about at that point in the movie what happens when someone fires a gun at this thing.
You know, it's funny that you say that because I just thought about it as being it's just a ghost. So you can't shoot at a ghost. I didn't think about the light aspect.
It never occurred to me.
Well, and we don't, I guess, know what would have happened if they had fired a bullet and hit it or somebody had stabbed it.
I guess shot it from behind wouldn't matter.
Sniper rounds. 500 yards.
Right?
This is all going in the sequel. It's going to be like alien to aliens. And the second one, it's going to be a team of Marines taking on a whole army of these things.
Marines.
That hasn't been done before. We could do that.
Yeah. Night vision goggles. And they have those little green clicky lights, you know, where like the fluorescence, you know, where they break those.
So we get to see what all types of light do.
Dude, that's a great idea. We'll really get to the bottom of this.
We'll make it, we'll outline it so thoroughly that it'll be completely non-scary.
You know what? We could call it a quiet place if we use sound.
That's brilliant. All right. Anything else about this movie that you wanted to talk about or about the concept that you thought would be worth exploring?
I think we really talked about that whole prequel concept.
35:33
Concluding Reflections
I think that's definitely worth exploring. Like figuring out, like, what would it be, right? Would it be some vampire from the 1200s or something who was then morphing?
Is it the same vampire? Is it, like, taking over different people's bodies? Is it in their lineage?
Is it the same vampire? Is it a family of vampires? I think there's a lot you could do with this concept.
But the physical manifestation around mental illness is so interesting. I've never seen that before in a horror movie.
I have seen quite a few horror movies that try to capture that idea or it's sort of like a high-level interpretation of parts of the film. But this is one that I thought did a little bit more of a direct.
A lot of the times when films do that, they don't name the illness. And so it's sort of implied.
Like you could interpret this creature as that thing or as similar or as sort of a representation or an analog to a mental health problem, like alcoholism, right?
But to actually have a character who is suffering from depression very clearly and has pretty severe cycles and then to have a creature which also physically could embody that. It was more pronounced than I've seen it.
And that aspect of it isn't terrible. You know, it works fairly well.
Do you think the creature may have caused her mental illness?
Well, again, I get stuck on details, right? For me, the reason why I love this podcast is because I'm all about sort of the simplest, stripped down, what's your original idea? What's your core concept?
And that means whenever something relevant to the core concept pops up, I pay extra attention to it. So little details stick with me through the whole film that I think sometimes are either not explained or inconsistent.
So, for example, they never said that the mom, when she was a little girl, was put into a mental institution for no reason. She was put in that institution, presumably, one would assume, for good reason.
So I was thinking like, what if the reason why she had this illness was because she had been haunted decades before when she was a little girl, and then she happened to go into that mental institution and that creature was there, which was the human
manifestation of the creature, basically. She actually wasn't killed by the light, let's say, it was like a haunting.
When it already was a creature, it wasn't a little girl with a skin problem, with a psychic ability, but it was haunting the other little girl, and it was just, that's why people thought she had mental illness.
That would make sense. And what I like about that potentially is, initially, it could start just as sort of like a regular ghost or creature that is intangible, but is haunting, like so many movies.
And maybe it has some ability to be, interact with the real world. But then maybe when the girl, little girl was taken away and put in a mental health hospital, this spirit became real enough as a way to follow her.
Yeah.
And that's why light killed it. And that's what it is. It was always a spirit.
It just had the ability to take on flesh outside of sunlight.
And it couldn't do it very well. So it was falling apart.
Right. That's why it looked kind of like it was dead. And sunlight made it, you know, accelerated it falling apart.
And then it just sort of continued the haunting. They inadvertently destroyed its physical body or forced it to abandon that. And it was weakened maybe.
And then it just manifested later again when it could.
Yeah.
So that stuff like that I like because that makes sense. Obviously, none of that was in the film. Right.
We'll have to make the other the other the prequel to kind of explain that.
Because it would make sense. It was like the little girl was so bizarre. She has a weird condition that no one's ever seen before.
Could be because it's a vampire ghost.
Right. Or it was a ghost person.
A ghost person. That's the name of the movie.
That's the prequel is ghost person.
A ghost person.
Yes. Put the A in there. What is it?
It's a ghost person.
Can you call this podcast episode a ghost person?
That's what I'll title it. Lights Out.
Lights Out.
Bracket a ghost person. A ghost person. Perfect.
Well, thank you very much for being a guest today. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening as always.
And I'll see you guys next time.