Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Andy Fickman
Starring: Bella DeLong, Amber Janea, Ana Luz Zambrana, John Bucy, Crystal Lake
Evans, Jarrett Austin Brown, Daryl Tofa
In the tradition of horror movies like Race with the Devil, Jeepers Creepers 2 and Dead End, director Andy Fickman's Don't Turn Out the Lights sees its protagonists menaced by evil forces while stuck inside a
vehicle on some remote stretch of America's desolate byways. It's a
horror mashup that draws from numerous sources though: it boasts the
sort of stereotypical teens you might find making up the body count of a
slasher movie; it has menacing rednecks straight out of a Deliverance clone; and there's more than a touch of Evil Dead when the supernatural kicks in.
Rather than sticking his doomed kids in a cabin in the woods, Fickman
strands them in an RV on a remote stretch of backwoods blacktop. Headed
by de facto final girl Carrie (Bella DeLong), a group of now
college-attending former high school classmates get together to pile
into the RV jock Michael (Jarrett Austin Brown) stole from his
uncle. Their destination is the Blue Light music festival (it's a
fictional festival, but a fake website has been set up at bluelightmusicfest.com, where you can read about its sinister history and links to pagan
rituals).
Along the way the youngsters get stoned, eat a lot of snacks, bicker
and flirt, until things take a nasty turn when they have a run-in with a
pair of rapey bikers at a gas station. Up steps Michael's
taciturn-to-the-point-of-creepy ex-marine friend Jason (John Bucy; and yes, the characters here aren't so subtly named after horror
icons), who kicks the bikers' asses before the group flees in the RV.
When everyone loses their cellphone reception in the middle of the
night, they stop off at a diner where they're greeted with the classic
Slaughtered Lamb stony silence before being told to turn back. Ignoring
the warning, our intrepid collection of caricatures continue down an
increasingly dark and secluded road until the RV appears to hit
something, coming to a stop in the process. Thus begins a night of
terror as some unseen force begins to pick the friends off one by
one.
Up to a point, Don't Turn Out the Lights serves as a witty postmodern take on teen horror movies. Fickman
piles on the clichés to such a degree that you have to assume he's doing
so to purposely set up assumptions based on our familiarity with such
stereotypes, only to subsequently pull the rug out from under us. We're
presented with all the usual stock characters here - the final girl, the
bitch, the feisty Latina, the Asian nerd, the black jock, the bimbo and
the strong silent bloke - but Fickman throws these figurines up in the
air, and they don't all land exactly how we expect them to. The opening
scene, in which the friends reunite in a series of screechy conversations
that sound like the writing of someone who has never spoken to a member of
Gen Z, prepared me for what I surmised would be an insufferable
experience. It's largely to the credit of the young cast that just a few
minutes later I found myself falling for their goofy charms, so by the
time the gore eventually hits the fan I was rooting for them to make it
through the night.
Unfortunately, after having so much fun playing around with its well-worn
genre tropes in its opening act, Don't Turn Out the Lights grinds to something of a halt around the same time the kids' RV
does likewise. At close to two hours the film is in need of some pruning,
with too much time spent on characters sitting around discussing their
faith. It sets up an Evil Dead-esque scenario with the RV playing the role of that film's cabin and the
protagonists falling under the spell of some unseen force, but it's sorely
lacking the manic energy of Sam Raimi's classic. The movie never pins down
its own mythology, with no clear reason given for what's playing out here,
and contradictory revelations are piled on top of one another. At one
point a character exits the narrative never to return, with no
explanation, as though the movie completely forgot about that plot point.
There are some effectively surreal scares but the lack of any established
rules concerning whatever is responsible for the unfolding horror
eventually comes off as a filmmaker simply throwing a bunch of innards at
the wall and hoping enough of it sticks to impress a jaded horror fandom.
Oh, and I have no idea why it's called Don't Turn Out the Lights, as such a warning never plays into the plot (it was originally titled
"Blue Light", which would have made more sense).
Don't Turn Out the Lights is on US VOD from September 6th. A UK/ROI release has yet to be
announced.
