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“Lights Out” began life as a three-minute short film by David F. Sandberg that was short on such elements as narrative complexity, character development and memorable dialogue (I don’t recall a single word being spoken) and long on coming up with more big jolts than would seem possible in such a short running time. It got no small degree of attention and Sandberg was given a chance to expand the short into a full-length feature, putting it in such esteemed genre company as the original “When a Stranger Calls” and “The Babadook.” In the cases of those works, the filmmakers found ways to expand on the original shorts that were clever, dramatically interesting and very, very scary. The problem with “Lights Out” is that while Sandberg is good at creating “BOO!” moments—those instant shocks where something pops out of nowhere and scares the bejeezus out of everyone—they're deployed in the service of a story that has little to offer otherwise, and begin to lose their effectiveness after a short while.

As was the case with “When a Stranger Calls,” “Lights Out” begins with a sequence designed to replicate the original short. Taking place in a factory after hours, instead of an anonymous apartment, it begins as an employee (Lotta Losten, who starred in the short) sees a mysterious female figure in the dark that disappears whenever the lights come back on, and who suddenly gets a lot closer when they go back out again. This time around, however, she survives, while the factory owner ( Billy Burke ) winds up meeting a gruesome end. Just before his demise, however, he was on the phone with his young son, Martin ( Gabriel Bateman ), talking about how mentally disturbed mom Sophie (Maria Bello) has apparently gone off her meds and seems to be talking to an imaginary friend named Diana. A few months pass and we learn that Sophie has gotten worse, and her conversations with Diana are so unnerving to Martin, not to mention all the attendant weird noises and scratches, that he can no longer sleep through the night and has been conking out in the middle of the school day.

When the school nurse cannot reach Sophie, she contacts his stepsister Rebecca ( Teresa Palmer )—whose own dad disappeared mysteriously years before and who has been estranged from Sophie since abruptly moving out a few years earlier. When Martin mentions Diana, she recognizes the name from her own traumatic childhood years and tries to have Martin stay with her. That doesn’t fly with Sophie, and after she reclaims Martin, Rebecca tries to get to the bottom of who or what Diana might be and what it has to do with her family. Without getting into too much detail, she is now a creature who can only attack in darkness and who cannot be around any sort of light. After a couple of Diana attacks, Rebecca, with the help of amiably dopey boyfriend Bret (Alexander DiPersia) and Martin, decide to hole up in Sophia’s house, lighting up the entire place in the process, in order to get her to start taking her medication again and seek treatment for her instability. Alas, Diana thrives when Sophia is at her most disoriented and begins knocking out the lights in order to get rid of the interlopers once and for all.

Although Sandberg is the director, the big behind-the-scenes name on display here is co-producer James Wan . His genre bonafides include the “Conjuring” and “ Insidious ” franchises, films that have largely eschewed the gory excesses of his breakthrough hit “ Saw ” in order to provide low-fi thrills more reliant on atmosphere, small-scale effects (like door slams) and things suddenly appearing from out of nowhere. When done properly, as was the case with the original “Conjuring” and “Insidious,” the results can be sensationally effective, like the best haunted house ride every created. Done wrong, however, and the results can be more like the sequels to “ The Conjuring ” and “Insidious”—increasingly tiresome efforts that continually try to wring additional screams out of material too familiar for its own good.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which of those ways “Lights Out” is headed after only a few minutes. Part of what made “The Conjuring” so good, for example, is that even though it was a spooky show at its heart, it still took the time to create characters that we cared about, develop a plot that didn’t completely strain the bonds of credulity and mix up the scares so that we didn’t know what to expect next. By comparison, this film has two strong actresses in Teresa Palmer and Maria Bello but then fails to ever come up with a way to make use of their talents. The story is kind of vague in the way that, despite plenty of exposition, it never quite figures out what Diana is supposed to be or what the extent of her powers are. As for the scares, there are a couple of effective shocks. But by the time it finally comes to a close (even though it only clocks in at 80 minutes, "Lights Out" still feels long), even the most jittery of moviegoers will find themselves feeling surprisingly calm and placid.

“Lights Out” has been made with a certain degree of style—enough to make you want to see what Sandberg might be capable of with a better screenplay—and it does contain one great moment that pays sly homage to the most famous moment from the classic thriller “ Wait Until Dark .” For the most part, though, the film is just a tired tread through the usual elements, and while that might be adequate for those sitting at home on a Saturday night looking for a few cheap thrills on cable, it hardly seems worth the effort of going out to see. And yet, with a current dearth of fright films out there—with the exception of “ The Shallows ,” an example of a genre entry that managed to take a familiar premise and turn it into something fresh and exciting—there may be enough pent-up demand for a film of its type to make it a success and begin yet another franchise. If that is the case, here is hoping that the filmmakers figure out something clever to do the next time around. 

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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Film credits.

Lights Out (2016)

Rated PG-13 for terror throughout, violence including disturbing images, some thematic material and brief drug content.

Lotta Losten as Esther

Billy Burke as Paul

Maria Bello as Sophie

Gabriel Bateman as Martin

Teresa Palmer as Rebecca

Alexander DiPersia as Bret

• David F. Sandberg

Writer (based on the short film by)

• Eric Heisserer

Cinematographer

• Marc Spicer
• Michel Aller
• Kirk M. Morri

Composer (music by)

• Benjamin Wallfisch

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• Lights Out is the brilliantly scary, surprisingly divisive movie you need to see

The ending is hated by many. But it’s what elevates the film to a near masterpiece.

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Lights Out , the new horror movie about a monster that can only strike when, well, the lights are out, is a near masterpiece of scary movie craft.

There are sequences in this film that left the audience at my screening joyfully applauding their creativity and audacity. And the movie’s central metaphor — the monster is depression! — is surprisingly durable, allowing for some great character moments.

Yes, it has problems — one big one in particular. But it’s the kind of movie where I realized about 10 minutes in how wrapped up I was in the lives of the characters, and realized with about 10 minutes left that I was holding my breath that the director and screenwriter wouldn’t screw everything up.

And while I loved the ending, it’s proven incredibly divisive for what it might seem to say about depression. So to talk about why I enjoyed Lights Out so much, I’m going to have to spoil some things. I’ll warn you before I do so, however.

But before that, let’s talk about the good, the bad, and the divisive of Lights Out .

Good: The monster is terrific on a bunch of levels

Let’s just start with the fact that a monster that can’t attack when someone is standing in a pool of light is a great idea for a movie monster. Considering that films themselves are just contrasts of light and darkness, the concept gives director David F. Sandberg lots to play with.

There have been other creatures like this in movie history (perhaps most famously in Pitch Black , the film that spawned Vin Diesel’s Riddick character), but what makes Lights Out so much fun is that it takes place in our world, where light sources can pop up just about anywhere.

In particular, the film uses everything from candles to cellphone screens to increase the tension in moments when the monster has, say, cut power to a city block and the characters need to cross vast swaths of darkness with only their wits to protect them.

Lights Out is obviously filmed on a smaller budget — it seems to take place in about two different locations, with just five or six characters — but the fact that it can turn literally any place into a house of horrors simply by flipping a light switch gives it a great boost when it comes to staging terrifying sequences.

And make no mistake: This is one scary monster. Named Diana, she cuts a creepy figure in silhouette, and she’s got long, long fingernails she can use to attack. She’ll freak you out.

Good: The use of the monster as a metaphor is better thought-out than in many films

Not since The Babadook have I seen a movie that used its monster as a metaphor for mental illness as effectively as this one does.

In particular, Diana has haunted the same family for two generations, and this serves as a sneaky way for the film’s screenwriter, Eric Heisserer , to explore the ways parents fear their own mental illnesses might be passed along to their children.

There’s so much in this film that feels informed by a life haunted by depression, from the way family matriarch Sophie ( Maria Bello ) sometimes just locks herself in her bedroom because she’s not sure she can spend time around her kids to the way that her daughter, Becca ( Teresa Palmer ), runs her fingers along scars on her arms that are from Diana’s long nails but might as well be from self-harm.

In the tradition of the best horror, Lights Out leaves all of this on the edges of the story, the better for you to fill in some of the blanks on your own. But it’s there, and the more you start to think about it, the more Diana’s function as a metaphor for depression works beautifully.

But Heisserer and Sandberg also dig into depression itself. Diana waxes and wanes the more Sophie takes her anti-depressants, and we learn that she first met Diana when she was committed as a teenager because her parents evidently didn’t know how else to handle her mental condition. There’s room here, obliquely, to find discussion of how people with mental illness have often been treated via being shut away

Mostly good: The acting is largely solid

Bello and Palmer are actresses I don’t always spark to, and there are early scenes where Palmer feels a bit like she’s not the right center for this film, her performance a little listless and disaffected. But that turns out to be intentional on her part. Becca is listless and disaffected.

By the time Sophie and Becca are hashing out their complicated relationship around the family dinner table, lighting fixtures the only thing keeping them safe, I was invested in the two of them.

Gabriel Bateman gives a solid "little kid in a horror movie" performance as Martin, Becca’s younger brother, who has attracted Diana’s attentions in recent months. (In general, I love how the characters already know about Diana and expect the audience to catch up, mostly.)

The movie hinges on his relationships with Sophie and Becca, and that those largely work is a tribute to him.

As Becca’s boyfriend, Bret, Alexander DiPersia rounds out the main cast. And he’s ... fine. He’s playing an impossible character — the good guy Becca keeps pushing away because of her own problems — and he’s at the center of the film’s best scene. But it’s not hard to wish he were played by a slightly more dynamic actor all the same.

Bad: The exposition is airlifted in from some other movie

Lights Out is very, very short — a little over 80 minutes, and that’s with the closing credits. (Without, it’s closer to 75.)

Yet it’s also lean. The actual story of Becca and her family figuring out how to survive Diana takes up only around an hour of screen time, without rushing or padding.

Thus, Sandberg and Heisserer make the choice to drop in a backstory for Diana that takes up an inordinate amount of time and tries way too hard to explain a monster that works better as metaphor anyway.

Once Diana becomes the ghost of an old friend of Sophie’s (this isn’t really a spoiler), she seems much less elemental than she does when she’s just attacking for no real reason. Plus, the exposition sequences seem to arrive at random and grind the story to a halt. They’re handled very poorly.

All right. Last chance to get out before I spoil the ending of this thing. Major, major spoilers follow.

Divisive: The ending of the film is either brilliant — or wrongheaded

In the end, Lights Out argues that Diana’s sole connection to this plane is Sophie, who realizes that if she’s not alive, the monster can’t hurt her children. After firing a gun at Diana during the film’s climax (and the way Diana disappears from dark spaces when the gun’s barrel flares is really neat), Sophie uses the gun to kill herself. Diana is gone, and the family can start healing.

In his review of the film , the A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd says this is risible when it comes to the film’s otherwise solid portrayal of depression. It’s not hard to read it as, say, an argument that the only way to cure depression is via suicide. And, yes, as a literal reading of the film’s text, that’s more or less accurate — especially if this movie does well and spawns the inevitable sequel.

But I was impressed by the audacity of that bleakness. In particular, Lights Out joins a recent movement of works about mental illness that attempt to argue that sometimes, those who suffer from it get to a place where suicide can seem like a relief or release — though that choice leaves emotional wreckage for those left behind.

Most recent examples are from the literary world, particularly Hanya Yanagihara’s massive novel A Little Life , but "The Gift," the fifth season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer , also plays with similar ideas. These stories are, in other words, not defenses of suicide but occasionally metaphorical explanations of it, an attempt to put the audience in the mental state of someone who makes that choice and force us to try to understand it.

That’s a complicated thing to explore, but I think it’s worth doing, if only because it destigmatizes the discussion of suicide itself — and thus mental illness. Both have been topics considered unworthy of polite conversation for ages in America.

If these works are interested in exploring the why of suicide (sometimes someone suffering from a mental illness feels it has become too unbearable to live with), we can perhaps better understand how to help those we know who struggle with those suicidal thoughts. We need to face down these dark fears — which is where horror, which has always helped us confront that which terrifies us, comes in.

Don’t get me wrong: Lights Out is not as thorough an examination of this idea as A Little Life or even Buffy . But if there’s a genre that can take this incredibly complex and dark idea and bring it out into the light, so to speak, it’s horror.

Lights Out could have done a slightly better job of preparing the audience for this final moment, but when it arrives, it has a dark grandeur to it that elevates the film from very fun to something surprisingly powerful.

Lights Out is playing in theaters throughout the country. See it even though I just told you the ending.

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‘Lights Out’ Review: I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Why do we still get scared at thing that go bump in the night? At the movies, I mean. Lights Out, the feature-length (well, 80 minutes) film version of a horror short that went viral online, allows Swedish filmmaker David F. Sandberg to earn his stripes as a director in the big leagues. It was horror master James Wan ( Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring ) who gave Sandberg the go-ahead for a $5 million feature.

He does a solid job of raising hell. With screenwriter Eric Heisserer fleshing out a 146-second short, Lights Out provides the reliably smashing Maria Bello a chance to dig into the juicy role of Sophie, a mother who keeps driving away the men in her life — not to mention her children. Insomniac daughter Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) has long ago moved out of the spookily-shaded family dump to an apartment in downtown Los Angeles. Now Rebecca’s 10-year-old stepbrother Martin (Gabriel Bateman) wants to head for the hills, or in this case, her apartment. His father (Billy Burke) has died at work for reasons unknown and Mom sees dead people. Make that one dead person: Diana (Alicia Vela-Bailey), a social outcast who did time with Sophie years ago in a mental institution. She’s is a real chatterbox, and harmless enough … until the lights go out. Then Diana starts death-dancing around the house like a spider hunting for a fly, namely anyone who gets in the way of her and Sophie. Turn on the lights, Diana’s gone. Turn them back on, it’s Halloween!

Predictable stuff, energized by some spiffy scare effects from cinematographer Marc Spicer who works wonders with underlighting. But the on/off tricks would grow tiring without actors who perform well beyond the call of fright-house duty. Bello makes a sympathetic figure out of a loving mother who thinks Diana is something she’s conjured out of her own subconscious. Her scenes with the skilled Palmer have a touching quality that suggest a real mother-daughter relationship grown toxic. It’s these two actors who make something hypnotic and haunting out of a movie built out of spare parts.

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• DVD & Streaming

Content Caution

In Theaters

• July 22, 2016
• Teresa Palmer as Rebecca; Gabriel Bateman as Martin; Alexander DiPersia as Bret; Billy Burke as Paul; Maria Bello as Sophie

Home Release Date

• October 25, 2016
• David F. Sandberg

Distributor

• Warner Bros.

Movie Review

Lots of kids are scared of the dark. Martin has reason to be.

Shadows are dangerous in Martin’s world: The blackness under the bed. The webbed gloom of the closet. Something lurks in the lightless corners, watching, awaiting her chance.

Just fanciful imaginings? Terrors in a little boy’s head? Martin knows differently. But what if the terrors are coming from his mother’s head? Well, that’s another story.

The shadows aren’t so dangerous when his mom, Sophie, takes her meds. She’s struggled with depression since she was a teen. As long as she controls her symptoms, the family’s darkness is held in check. But lately, Sophie’s stopped taking them, and she’s welcomed the darkness like a long-lost friend. Indeed, Sophie even has a name for it, Diana, and she seems to enjoy its company. Sophie spends her days with the curtains drawn, her nights pacing her inky-black living room, talking to someone … or something.

Martin’s father, Paul, tried to help … and was killed for his trouble. Martin’s older sister, Rebecca, wants to protect him, too. When Martin begs her to let him stay with her, she agrees and takes him home. But social services won’t let Becca—a rudderless free spirit—keep custody of her younger brother. Seems the government thinks Sophie’s a dandy mother … and it doesn’t cotton to the idea of bogeymen.

So Martin goes home, where shadows paint the walls. And Sophie’s genuinely thrilled to have her little boy back. She knows that things have been tough and stressful since his dad died. Maybe tonight, she volunteers, they can have a fun movie night together: just the three of them.

“Mom?” Martin asks. “How ’bout just you and I tonight. OK?”

“We’ll see,” Sophie says.

Positive Elements

Lights Out is more than a film about things that go bump in the night. The core fear here is not really darkness, but abandonment. The threat of being left alone—and the temptation to run away—is a powerful manifestation here, perhaps as powerful as Diana herself. As such, the movie’s heroes are those who stick around.

Martin is particularly inspirational. When Becca wants to flee, Martin demands that they stay and rescue their mom—even though he knows, better than anyone, the dangers of trying to do so. “You’ve been gone a long time,” he tells Becca, “But she’s our mom! She needs us more than ever!”

And even though Becca and Sophie had a falling out years ago, Becca does stick it out. She loves her mother and will try to save her if she can. Becca’s boyfriend, Bret—a guy whom Becca has long kept at an emotional (if not physical) distance—shows he’s willing to stay with Becca no matter what. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says.

And even though Sophie shows a disturbing affinity for Diana, her kids are still her highest priority, and she’ll still do anything to save them.

Spiritual Elements

Though Sophie firmly tells Becca that “ghosts aren’t real,” that’s what Diana seems to be. She’s the presence of one of Sophie’s childhood “friends,” a girl she apparently met while the two were in a psychiatric facility together. Unlike most ghosts, though, Diana takes on a powerful physical presence in the absence of light. She also has telepathic abilities, which she naturally uses in the worst ways possible.

Sexual Content

The first time we see Bret and Becca, they’re in bed together, apparently enjoying a post-coital moment. She is in lingerie, and he’s partly covered by a sheet. Bret asks Becca if she wants to “go again,” but she refuses and leaves to take a shower instead. (We see her unclothed from the waist up through a partly translucent window.)

Bret seems more interested in a real commitment than Becca does, though marriage is never mentioned as a possibility. But he’d settle for the ability to leave a change of clothes and a toothbrush over at Becca’s apartment. For Becca, though, even that level of commitment is frightening; she even refuses to acknowledge him as a “boyfriend.” When Bret jokingly tries to hide a single sock of his in her dresser, she finds it and throws it out the window at him.

Violent Content

Diana doesn’t content herself to lurking in the shadows: She’s a killer. In the opening scene, the entity gashes Paul’s leg open as he runs through a partly shadowed hall (we see the bloody wound), then pulls him into the darkness to finish him. His bloody body then gets lobbed back into the light so the audience can get a good look at what sort of mangling deeds Diana is capable of.

Throughout the film, Diana grabs and claws and does her upmost to injure the living folks around her, sometimes succeeding. Two other people die by her hands, and the corpse of one is propped up like a mannequin. She suggests that murder is not new to her. She smashes people into walls and dressers, throws them off balconies, pulls them under beds and holds them up like rag dolls, as if preparing to break them across her knee.

[ Spoiler Warning ] But Diana is not immune from injury. When she was a flesh-and-blood little girl, she apparently suffered from a rare skin disorder, one that left her particularly sensitive to light. Doctors apparently tried to cure her by exposing her to light, but it killed her instead. If Diana touches light even now in her undead state, her spectral flesh will crackle and burn.

Someone commits suicide. Becca finds a picture of another suicide victim, one whose head has been completely blown off its body.

Crude or Profane Language

Five s-words and one use of “b–ch.” God’s name is misused twice, and Jesus’ name is abused once.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Becca’s apartment has a bong in it. As noted, Sophie’s supposed to be taking antidepressants, which Martin calls her “vitamins.” But even when she tries to take them, Diana makes sure she can’t.

Other Negative Elements

When Momma ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy. Lights Out puts a terrible new twist on that saying.

Sure, on one level, darkness is the enemy here. To keep Diana at bay, the film’s other characters must keep the lights turned on. But there’s something else deeper at work: the awful gloom of depression. Diana can only manifest herself and hurt others if Sophie’s mind is sufficiently imbalanced.

But Lights Out doesn’t play like an allegory: Diana is not just Sophie’s depressive alter-ego or something that can be counseled away. Still, the movie’s psychological underpinnings are obvious: How depression can impact a family. How frightening it can be. How damaging. How isolating. How sometimes when we’re confronted by mental illness, we want to ignore it. And when we can’t do that, how tempting it can be to run away.

Which, to me, made the movie oddly inspiring—rarely a word I’d use in conjunction with a horror flick. How should we respond to the people we love when they’re hurting and sick? When they’re suffering through something we don’t understand? We stick with them. We try to help them. Above all, we don’t leave .

But in order to pull that piece of inspiration out of this seriously scary shriekfest, we must also acknowledge— and spoil, I’m afraid—its seriously problematic ending.

You see, in the end Sophie kills herself. From one perspective, that of a mother making a terrible choice to defeat a dark-loving bogeyman, we might be tempted to justify Sophie’s choice as an act of selfless sacrifice. After all, without Sophie, we’re told, there is no Diana. Sophie tells Becca that by killing herself, she is saving their lives.

But as soon as we consider Sophie’s emotional darkness—her depression at the root of Diana’s manifestation—that “sacrifice” turns tragic. In a movie that stresses how important it is not to abandon the ones you love, Sophie does just that. Instead of dealing with her personal demon, she kills it by killing herself. She leaves behind a son who desperately wanted to save her, a daughter weeping bitterly beside her body.

In the last act, Lights Out whispers its own (perhaps unintentional) dark message, a message that many people who grapple with depression don’t need to hear: My loved ones are better off without me. And so the final moments of the movie contradict whatever inspiration we might’ve found before, and that’s a terrible shame. After the credits roll and the lights come on, some bleak, terrible darkness may linger—especially for viewers who grapple with the darkness of depression.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Arguably offers commentary on the United States' f

Frank and Max seem like decent people. Max takes c

The two main characters are Duffy (Frank Grillo),

War flashbacks include guns, shooting (including p

Extremely strong, pervasive language: "f--k," "mot

Characters drink beer and wine and smoke cigarette

Parents need to know that Lights Out is an action movie about an ex-military man (Frank Grillo) and a fight enthusiast/gambler (Mekhi Phifer) who team up to make money in the underground fight game, only to run into trouble in the form of a crime family and crooked police. Violence includes war flashbacks …

Positive Messages

Arguably offers commentary on the United States' financial situation—i.e., the high interest rate of credit card and student loan debt that makes it almost impossible to pay off.

Positive Role Models

Frank and Max seem like decent people. Max takes care of his sister, and Frank shows kindness toward her, doing little repairs around the house. Frank's entire motivation is to buy a headstone for his mother. But in the end, they associate with criminals and are involved in criminal schemes. Duffy makes his living either through violence or (possibly) cheating at cards.

Diverse Representations

The two main characters are Duffy (Frank Grillo), who's White, and Max (Mekhi Phifer), who's Black. Max's sister, Rachel (Erica Peeples), and niece, Hannah (Jailyn Rae), are Black women who don't have much agency, other than one scene in which Rachel throws out an abusive boyfriend. Mostly they're targets of the villains. Other characters of color are in supporting, mostly villainous, roles; they're played by performers including Amaury Nolasco, who's Puerto Rican; JuJu Chan Szeto, who's Chinese American; and Jessica Medina, who's from the Dominican Republic.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

War flashbacks include guns, shooting (including people), explosions, deaths. A teen is shot. Many scenes of fighting, including violent street fights/cage fights with punching, kicking, throwing, slamming, choking, bones breaking, etc. Stabbing. Roundhouse kicks. Bloody wounds/injuries. Bloody mouth, drooling blood. Blood puddle. A man slaps a woman (he apologizes; she throws him out of the house). Dialogue about suicide ("my brother put that Glock in his mouth, and he squeezed the trigger").

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Extremely strong, pervasive language: "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "bulls--t," "a--hole," "p---y," "goddamn," "bitch," "ass," "pendejo," "d--khead," "ballsack," "balls," "hell," "shut the f--k up." "Jesus Christ" and "Jesus f---in' Christ" as exclamations.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters drink beer and wine and smoke cigarettes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Lights Out is an action movie about an ex-military man ( Frank Grillo ) and a fight enthusiast/gambler ( Mekhi Phifer ) who team up to make money in the underground fight game, only to run into trouble in the form of a crime family and crooked police. Violence includes war flashbacks (guns, shooting, explosions), lots of fight scenes (punching, kicking, throwing, slamming, choking, bones breaking, etc.), bloody wounds, people being shot and/or killed, dialogue about suicide, and a man slapping a woman (who responds by throwing him out). Pervasive, extremely strong language includes uses of "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "bulls--t," "a--hole," "p---y," "goddamn," "bitch," "ass," "pendejo," and much more. Characters drink casually in bars and at dinner, and there's some cigarette smoking. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

In LIGHTS OUT, former soldier Michael "Duffy" Duffield ( Frank Grillo ) gets off of a bus in Los Angeles and goes into a bar. He joins a card game and starts winning big, prompting the other players to question his honesty, which ultimately leads to a bar fight. Duffy dispatches the others easily, and the altercation is witnessed by Max ( Mekhi Phifer ). Max offers Duffy a way to make a lot more money: using his skills in an illegal street fighting ring. Since Max owes money to a crime boss named Sage ( Dermot Mulroney ), this scheme can help them both. Unfortunately, Sage and his partner, crooked cop Ellen Ridgeway ( Jaime King ), are also in debt and are searching for money that a low-level criminal stole and hid in Max's sister Rachel's (Erica Peeples) house, unbeknownst to her. Coincidentally, Duffy happens to be staying at Rachel's. Once Max and Duffy realize what a fix they've found themselves in, they decide to put an end to it for good.

Is It Any Good?

The combination of Grillo and Phifer promised something at least passable, but it's all so sloppy and generic that it's more likely it was just a paycheck for them. Just about every single thing in Lights Out has been used before, from the street fighting to the hero doing little repairs in the sister's house to the villain saying "tick-tock, tick-tock," to indicate that time is running out. (Even the film's title is borrowed from a far superior 2016 horror movie .) During the fight scenes, whenever Duffy breaks a skull or some bones, the movie uses an "X-ray" technique—borrowed from 1970s Sonny Chiba action movies—to show it. If the fight scenes had been great, that might have helped salvage things, but director Christian Sesma (of the abysmally bad Every Last One of Them and other duds) mangles them, too, with jittery shaky-cam cinematography and erratic editing, sucking the life and suspense out of them.

That said, Lights Out isn't quite as bad as some of Sesma's other work, simply because of quirky touches like King's hairdo or the fact that nearly every single character in the movie is in debt to someone else (which could be some kind of commentary on U.S. values/society). Lights Out could be an acceptable time-waster for viewers of a certain taste, but others will want to look elsewhere for prime pugilism.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Lights Out 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

Could Max and Duffy be considered role models , given some of their illegal or unsavory activities? If so, why?

Why is fighting the subject of so many movies? What's appealing or interesting about it?

Nearly every character in the movie seems to be in debt to someone else. Do you think the movie has any messages about the state of finances and debt in the United States? If so, what is it?

Duffy says that he was "exploited by his country" by serving in the military. Do you agree with that statement? Why, or why not?

Movie Details

• In theaters : February 16, 2024
• On DVD or streaming : February 16, 2024
• Cast : Frank Grillo , Mekhi Phifer , Jaime King
• Director : Christian Sesma
• Inclusion Information : Black actors, Female actors
• Studio : Quiver Distribution
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Run time : 90 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : violence and pervasive language
• Last updated : April 26, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Movie Review: Lights Out (2016)

• Movie Reviews
• 4 responses
• --> July 24, 2016

Unable to sleep one night, young Martin (Gabriel Bateman, “ Annabelle ”) ventures from his room to investigate some whispering he hears in the hallway. He discovers his mother, Sophie (Maria Bello, “ The 5th Wave ”), talking in hushed tones to someone in the shadows. She apologizes, asking, “Did we wake you?” and sends him back to bed. Moments later, he sits in terror as someone scratches at the door and tries to get into his room; as a result, he stays awake for the remainder of the night.

The next day, his sister, Rebecca (Teresa Palmer, “ Knight of Cups ”), is called to his school and is informed that Martin has fallen asleep in homeroom three times in a week. Becca, who lives in an apartment on her own and has experienced some of the horror-filled nights Martin describes, tries to take in her little brother as a way to force their mother to attend more carefully to Martin’s safety. A visibly unstable Sophie replies that there’s no threat in her home, and tries to convince Martin that her friend, Diana, means them no harm. Left with no other choice, Becca and her boyfriend Bret (Alexander DiPersia, “Good Girls Revolt” TV series) stay the night with Martin, and try desperately to find a way to keep everyone safe from the extremely frightening being Sophie calls Diana.

Based on director David F. Sandberg’s short film of the same name, Lights Out is an incredibly simple, yet effective horror movie that’s thin on story development, but, admittedly, this isn’t a film people want to see because of a detailed plot. Audiences are immediately sucked into a world that’s perpetually darkened by drawn curtains and lamps with missing lightbulbs. Diana lurks in darkness of all types — she hides in closets, in blackened rooms, and even in slight shadows cast by a lit candle. She is greedy about her connection to Sophie, and ensures her own preservation by snatching her enemies into the dark. The tension is just as relentless as Diana herself, and the film wastes no opportunity to show how terrifying this spectre can truly be when threatened.

The practical effects used to create Diana are as unsettling as they come. Diana crouches in dark hallways, and, as depicted in the film’s trailers, disappears when light is shined on her. She moves swiftly and invisibly, so that when the light goes out, it’s revealed that she’s covered quite a distance. People who admit to being afraid of the dark will tell you that it’s not the dark they fear; it’s what could be lurking IN the dark that makes their skin crawl. Sandberg wields this notion as masterfully as Jason Voorhees wields a machete, and he couples it with masterful sound manipulation — you want those noises to stop, but when they do, you desperately want them back to serve as clues to Diana’s whereabouts.

Lights Out tightly curls its audience members into their seats and forces them to peer apprehensively into the shadows of the dimly lit theater. One of the best sequences involves light uncontrolled by the characters — picture a room lit by a blinking neon sign outside the window, and imagine the terror derived from knowing you can’t keep that sign lit. Your eyes constantly scan the screen for any scrap of light characters can safely surround themselves with, and groan with pained anticipation when that light is snatched away. The film is loaded with the kind of tension that stays with you long into the night — those late-night trips to the kitchen or bathroom won’t be made in the dark without your mind conjuring the image of Diana creeping in your hallway.

Now, while I, personally, prefer a film that’s got a developed storyline with a valid (or at least attempted) explanation for “what’s happening” in a haunting, I have to admit that Lights Out is a enjoyable scarer that’s definitely worth seeing, especially in a crowded theater. We love the summer movie season because we’re given fun popcorn films we don’t have to take seriously and that we can laugh about with friends. Well, what’s more fun than a horror movie that succeeds in getting the most seasoned viewers to jump in spite of themselves? We lament that it doesn’t happen often, so it’s quite the treat when we’re gifted with one. And since we’ve already enjoyed “ The Conjuring 2 ” this summer, we’re pretty lucky to get a second in Lights Out .

Just be sure to keep your flashlights handy.

Tagged: family , ghost , mother , secret

School teacher by day. Horror aficionado by night.

Movie Review: Little Fish (2020) Movie Review: The Unholy (2021) Movie Review: The Mark of the Bell Witch (2020) Movie Review: Chop Chop (2020) Movie Review: Coven of Evil (2020) Movie Review: Mara (2018) Movie Review: The First Purge (2018)

'Movie Review: Lights Out (2016)' have 4 comments

July 24, 2016 @ 12:38 pm Impaction

I always knew as a child there was something lurking in the darkness..

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July 24, 2016 @ 1:13 pm nightlady

I enjoyed the lack of story–lean and mean jump scares and thrills are all I am looking for to give me my horror fixation.

July 24, 2016 @ 2:53 pm j.siqueira

July 24, 2016 @ 4:01 pm CamOGravey

I thought it more inventive than anything Wan is doing with his Insidious and Conjuring episodes.

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Lights Out (United States, 2016)

Fear of the dark - few phobias are more common across the spectrum of modern society. Horror, in all its shapes, sizes, and forms, often works by exploiting this. It’s an underpinning of vampire stories and almost all horror films save their goriest scenes for the night. By taking this to a literal extreme, Lights Out would seem to have uncovered a foolproof path to frightening audience members. Unfortunately, the film stumbles, offering too few legitimate scares and displaying an overreliance on traditional horror movie clichés. Is the PG-13 rating a problem? Possibly - it’s tough to generate the level of psychological intensity necessary for true terror when constrained by a kid-friendly rating. Is it a deficiency in director David F. Sandberg’s approach? Again, possibly, although he found success in the 2013 three-minute short upon which this feature length version is based. Or is it that the story isn’t as compelling as the concept?

The premise of Lights Out is something we all accept as children but lose sight of as we grow older: monsters only come out when it’s dark. In this movie’s realm, the rule applies concretely. As long as there’s a light source, the demon/ghost/supernatural presence is constrained. But once the sun has set and the lights are out, it has free rein. In order to make this work, Sandberg must employ an army of contrivances to explain why lights are always going out, flashlights are failing, and candle flames are flickering. He also occasionally cheats. The creature can reside in a lighted area as long as it’s in shadow. And, in true horror movie tradition, all the characters make inexplicably stupid decisions.

For those who like scary movies, there are few things more viscerally satisfying than ghost tales that deliver. Those films aren’t about a coherent narrative or an airtight story. Their goal, quite simply, is to freak viewers out. To do that, all they have to do is create sympathetic characters, put those characters in harm’s way, and (most importantly) generate a suffocatingly ominous atmosphere, pregnant with tension and punctuated by moments of extreme terror. Although Lights Out does an adequate job with the characters, it fails to elevate its tone and style above those of any generic PG-13 horror movie. It’s a shame to see a clever premise developed in such an underwhelming fashion but that’s too often been the fate of horror concepts since Hollywood decided to tailor a lion’s share of the genre for pre-teens and young teenagers.

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Lights Out review – half-baked horror gropes around for a point

The central conceit – a ghoul you can only see in the dark – is smart, but the only bumps in the night will be the sounds of viewers nodding off

F ew genres lend themselves to nostalgia like horror. From the Universal Monsters to cheeseball Vampira -hosted B pictures, from Italian giallo to gory 80s exploitation flicks in enormous VHS cases, one can reflect fondly on it all. Even the distasteful torture porn of the early 21st century wins a few points just for pissing so many people off. But who will ever be nostalgic for the mainstream horror films that are flooding our marketplace today? Lights Out is yet another half-baked, PG-13 scare-em snoozer centered on an underdeveloped supernatural concept that won’t even give kids a good nightmare. I know it’s summertime, and some of the programming can be ephemeral, but Lights Out’s greatest feat is how you can feel yourself forgetting this 81-minute piffle as you are actually watching it. That really takes something.

It would, however, be unfair not to at least praise its central gimmick, the same one found in director David F Sanberg’s viral two-and-a-half-minute video that grabbed the attention of the horror mogul James Wan . Basically, there’s a ghoul that you can only see when it’s dark. Did I see a weird silhouette? Let me switch on the light. Nope, nothing. Turn the light off again and the creepy, semi-visible creature with catlike tapetum lucidum is even closer! Genuinely horrifying no matter how many times you see it.

Is this something you can stretch out into an entire movie? Sure! Herman Melville stretched out “there once was a fish this big – but it got away!” into the greatest novel in American letters . But Lights Out doesn’t come up with anything creative. Instead it bogs down with typical bumps in the night as a screwy mom (Maria Bello) deals with her netherworld demons, threatening the safety of her young son Martin (Gabriel Bateman). Coming to Martin’s aid is his older half-sister, Rebecca (Teresa Palmer), who must give up her lifestyle of fast living to accept being an adult. Her irresponsible ways manifest themselves in the heavy metal posters that hang in the bachelorette pad. You’ll notice them as she kicks her boyfriend (Alexander DiPersia) out after their intimate visits. She’s a bad girl! Teresa Palmer may look like the picture of health, but we know she’s got problems because she lives above a tattoo parlor that blinks a red neon light all through the night.

That anachronistic set design serves a plot purpose, though, when Mom sends over her undead darkness monster. The rhythm of the flashing sign gives the sequence an entertaining cadence, one of about three moments in which Lights Out delivers on the promise of that viral video. (Another great moment involves inserting a carport into a chase.)

These very limited grace notes tell us that director Sanberg indeed has some visual chops, and could very well have a solid horror feature inside of him that will come out one day. Unfortunately, the script to Lights Out, which can basically be summed up as The Babadook but dumb, is not the project that will bring his talents into view. This is a movie that just floats along until it becomes socially irresponsible not to divulge some sort of explanation. Then our hero stumbles upon a file cabinet with annotated photographs and a 30-year-old micro-cassette player that: a) still works and b) is set to the precise point where hitting play gives you all your answers. Are the AA batteries possessed with supernatural powers, too? Maybe that’s for the sequel.

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[Review] ‘Lights Out’ is a Frightening Study of Mental Illness

Adapting a short film into a full-length feature can prove to be a troubling task. All too frequently, there just isn’t enough material to mine out of the short film to stretch out into a 90-minute film. Or the creator/director can be too close to his/her original product and be unwilling to make necessary changes to the original concept. Luckily for us, screenwriter Eric Heisserer ( A Nightmare on Elm Street, Final Destination 5 ) and director David S. Sandberg proved up to the task when adapting Sandberg’s 2013 short film   Lights Out . The final product is a taut, competently made and wonderfully acted horror film that wisely pairs supernatural horror with the very real horror of mental illness, adding a certain amount depth not seen in many mainstream horror films.

After his father (Billy Burke) is murdered, Martin (Gabriel Bateman,  Annabelle ) repeatedly sees the same ghostly apparition around his house. This apparition, named Diana, is only visible in the dark and has a direct link to his clinically depressed mother Sophie (Maria Bello, A History of Violence, Assault on Precinct 13 ). When Martin begins falling asleep in school, Child Protective Services gets involved, as does his sister Rebecca (Teresa Palmer,  Warm Bodies ) who left home years ago to escape Sophie. With the help of her boyfriend Bret (Alexander DiPersia), Rebecca seeks a way to uncover the mystery behind Diana and rid the world of her before she is able to hurt Martin.

Performances are strong across the board, especially those from Palmer and Bello who really do look like mother and daughter. Bello’s anguish over her mental illness is palpable in every scene she is in, and Palmer proves to be up to the challenge of matching her beat for beat. The real MVP here is Bateman, who is one of the best child actors I’ve seen in recent memory. He is tasked with spending the majority of the film wide-eyed with terror, and he sells it incredibly well. He also doesn’t fall into many of the tropes you usually see with child characters in horror films.

Lights Out  runs an all-too-brief 81 minutes (including credits), which is both a positive and a negative. On the plus side, the film moves at a brisk pace that never dwells on any plot point too long. You won’t find time spent on a miscommunication between Rebecca and her boyfriend or unnecessary scenes where no one believes Gabriel and Teresa about Diana’s threat. This is a film with a mission and it accomplishes that mission successfully. That being said, the third act of the film does feel a little rushed and the big battle is over before its even begun.  While it is suspenseful, it would have behooved the film to hold certain moments just a bit longer or take more time during certain scenes, specifically those involving the relationship between Rebecca and Diana. You get a clear sense of their relationship, but you want to see more of it. In that respect, the film can be viewed as a success. It’s always better to leave you wanting more.

Linking Diana to Sophie’s depression is a wise decision and is the most fascinating aspect of the film, but the short length of the feature prevents the film from delving into it beyond a surface level analysis. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but one wonders what it would have been like had it been written more as a psychological drama that happened to have a ghost in it as opposed to a supernatural horror film that happens to have dramatic elements. The former wouldn’t have been as marketable though, so it’s easy to see why they went this route.

Lights Out  is the most commercial film that could have come out of this premise. It is sure to be a crowd-pleaser. The scares are the main focus here, and they mostly work. By the end of the film you will become numb to Diana’s presence as the majority of the scares consist of her suddenly appearing when the lights go out. That being said, the jump scares don’t feel as cheap as they normally would in the hands of a lesser director. Sandberg finds many creative ways to utilize the gimmick (a sequence involving the flash of a gunshot comes to mind) that are sure to keep you intrigued all the way until the credits. On the writing side of things, Heisserer is commendable for avoiding many of your standard horror clichés, though  Lights Out  does feature another appearance of an inept police force that induces more eye-rolls than fear.

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. Though the scares become repetitive after a certain point, the film never ceases to keep you engaged. It boasts strong performances and a novel concept that lends itself to clever, if sometimes obvious, scares. It’s certainly better than other films that have used the same gimmick (see: Darkness Falls ,  Darkness ). At the very least, it is impressive that a film of its kind is even seeing a wide release, and for that we should all be thankful.

A journalist for Bloody Disgusting since 2015, Trace writes film reviews and editorials, as well as co-hosts Bloody Disgusting's Horror Queers podcast, which looks at horror films through a queer lens. He has since become dedicated to amplifying queer voices in the horror community, while also injecting his own personal flair into film discourse. Trace lives in Austin, TX with his husband and their two dogs. Find him on Twitter @TracedThurman

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Two new images from ‘alien: romulus’ spotlight the heroes and the giger-faithful monster.

Fede Alvarez’s  ( Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe )  Alien: Romulus  will be unleashed in theaters nationwide on  August 16 , and Entertainment Weekly brings us two new images today.

The first image you’ll find below gives us another fresh look at the film’s Xenomorph, with Alvarez promising the outlet that it’s the most H.R. Giger-faithful Xenomorph of them all.

Entertainment Weekly writes, “… Alvarez promises [the Xenomorph’s design] is closer to H.R. Giger’s original creation than any other iteration.” The late H.R. Giger was of course integral to Ridley Scott’s Alien , designing the iconic monster the franchise is centered on.

The other image you’ll find below gives us a look at two of the human characters from Alien: Romulus , Archie Renaux’s Tyler and Cailee Spaeny’s heroine Rain Carradine.

Head over to Entertainment Weekly for their full preview of the upcoming film.

Here’s the full official plot synopsis for Alvarez’s  Alien: Romulus , which comes in the wake of Disney reviving the  Predator  franchise in spectacular fashion with last year’s  Prey …

“While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”

Cailee Spaeny  ( The Craft: Legacy ,  Pacific Rim Uprising )  leads the cast alongside  Isabela Merced,   David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Spike Fearn  and  Aileen Wu .

Alien: Romulus  takes place in between the first two films. It’s been described as “an original standalone feature,” one that “will focus on a group of young people  on a distant world.” 

Fede Alvarez co-wrote the script with  Rodo Sayagues  ( Evil Dead ).  Ridley Scott  is on board as producer for the film, the first movie in the franchise to be released by Disney.

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Movie Review – Lights Out (2024)

February 15, 2024 by Robert Kojder

Lights Out , 2024.

Directed by Christian Sesma. Starring Frank Grillo, Mekhi Phifer, Scott Adkins, Dermot Mulroney, Jaime King, Kevin Gage, Amaury Nolasco, Jessica Medina, JuJu Chan, Erica Peeples, Donald Cerrone, Paul Sloan, Mary Christina Brown, Justin Furstenfeld, Jailyn Rae, and Robert Laenen.

A drifting ex-soldier turns underground fighter with the help of a just released ex-con, pitting them both against a crime boss, corrupt cops and hired killers.

The filmmakers behind Frank Grillo-led action romp Lights Out seem to think that the deeper Duffy gets into a world of drug dealers and crooked cops while initially trying to make some cash as an underground fighter, the more drama will emerge. In actuality, it just becomes messy and bogged down by too many characters and subplots.

Directed by Christian Sesma (with Chad Law, Garry Charles, and Brandon Burrows all receiving writing credits), the film has a misguided ambition to be more than a story about a homeless PTSD-stricken military veteran working through his anger issues and drifting lifestyle through punching and kicking people for money. Even the fact that the man who first notices him and chooses to bring him into this world, functioning as his manager, Max (Mekhi Phifer), owes money to a local crime boss named Sage (Dermot Mulroney), fits the story and gives logical motivation for both characters.

However, there are also duplicitous undercover cops (Jamie King and Paul Sloan), physically abusive boyfriends stashing cash stolen from gangsters (Max’s sister and niece are also involved here), and an ever-expanding spiral of secondary characters up to no good in an over-encumbered narrative that forgets its original appeal. Watching Frank Grillo break bones (highlighted by x-ray visuals that feel blatantly plagiarized from a modern-day Mortal Kombat game) and process Afghanistan trauma (complete with the occasional cutaway to military shootouts) is mildly engaging, even if the filmmakers don’t necessarily know how to make any of these fights pop with stressful urgency.

Observing a bond developing between Duffy and Max is also moderately worthwhile. The further Lights Out strays from all of this, the more it begins to feel like several different subgenres of action movies crammed into one unwieldy experience. By the end of the first act, it’s no longer a movie about street fighting but rather a full-scale crime thriller where everyone becomes more endangered by the minute. There is no interest in fleshing out Duffy at the most basic level; after a while, his military PTSD begins to feel like an excuse to toss in some flashbacks of a different kind of violence rather than anything servicing the plot.

Scott Adkins also shows up as a veteran buddy immediately prepared to give Duffy a hand when his back is against the wall, quickly stealing the action and reminding that even when the filmmakers seem like they don’t know what they are doing, he has a sixth sense for how to elevate shoddy material with memorable brutality and kills. Without knowing anything about his character, Scott Adkins has that charisma and bonafide badass machismo to put viewers on his side and balletic physical movement to sell the combat.

Sadly, by that point, there are no reasons left to be invested in Lights Out , and TVs may have already been turned off. The more expansive and deeper it gets into the criminal underworld, the more convoluted and flat the story and action become. Serviceable violence is not enough to overcome that.

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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‘Guilt’ Review: When the Lights Go Out in Edinburgh

The final season of Scotland’s most notable TV drama, on PBS’s “Masterpiece,” is a suitably twisty and sardonic send-off for the battling McCall brothers.

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By Mike Hale

Contains spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2 of “Guilt.”

“Guilt,” a pioneering series in Scottish television — it was the first drama commissioned by the newly formed BBC Scotland channel in 2019 — has built an audience well beyond its borders. A melancholy tale of family dysfunction presented as a complicated crime thriller, it combines British regionalism with peak TV-style poker-faced comedy in a way that has made it a critical darling around the world.

Created and written by Neil Forsyth, “Guilt” has arrived in dense, lively four-episode bursts; the third and final season has its American premiere on PBS’s “Masterpiece” beginning Sunday. Each installment has been organized around a psycho-philosophical theme: first guilt, then revenge in Season 2, and now, as Forsyth described it in a BBC interview, redemption.

But the pleasure of the show does not come from diagraming its moral lessons (unless that’s your thing), or from unwinding Forsyth’s sometimes maddeningly convoluted plots, which entangle sons and daughters of Edinburgh’s rough-and-tumble Leith district with the city’s gangsters, cops and politicians.

What makes “Guilt” worthwhile is Forsyth’s knack for creating characters who work their way into our affections, less by their actions than by their unconscious, soul-deep responses to life in the grim confines of Leith and the promise of something better in Edinburgh’s more comfortable precincts.

At the center of the web are Max and Jake McCall (Mark Bonnar and the marvelous Jamie Sives), brothers with very little use for each other who become bound in a seemingly endless cycle of lies, danger and recrimination. It begins in the opening minutes of Season 1 when Jake, with Max in the car’s passenger seat, accidentally runs into an old man, killing him. Jake, a gentle soul with an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music (he could have wandered in from a Nick Hornby novel), wants to call the police; Max, a rapacious lawyer with a near-sociopathic lack of empathy, says no.

This is the original sin for which the brothers are still paying. Covering up their hit-and-run homicide embroils them with the Lynches, a married pair of quietly vicious gangsters whom Max and Jake are both on the run from, and scheming to take down, across the show’s three seasons. While the brothers work together for survival, they are also at each other’s throats, taking turns ruefully betraying each other, leading to imprisonment, exile and worse.

Sives brings a natural soulfulness to Jake while also making his cold double crosses of his brother believable; Bonnar is just as capable given the inverse challenge, conveying Max’s venality, vanity and desperation for success (pegged to being abandoned as a child) while also making credible his rare flashes of sympathy.

But even more crucial to the show’s effect are the amusingly vivid characters who surround the brothers: Kenny (Emun Elliott), the formerly alcoholic, surprisingly capable investigator who serves as the show’s wobbly moral center; Stevie (Henry Pettigrew), the hilariously jumpy corrupt cop; Teddy (Greg McHugh), who fully communicates his ability to dispense extreme violence while rarely actually dispensing it; Sheila (Ellie Haddington), the deadpan black widow; and Maggie Lynch, the show’s motherly, ruthless big bad, with Phyllis Logan of “Downton Abbey” playing wonderfully against type.

(Even incidental characters have distinctive moments. In the new season, Anita Vettesse, as the girlfriend of a man who gets thrown from a great height, gets to deliver this memorable couplet: “There’s nobody better at keeping their head down than me. It’s probably my biggest talent, if I’m honest with you.”)

The first season of “Guilt” was a self-contained triumph. It offered a cleverly satirical structure — as Jake and Max’s cover-up rippled out, one character after another found his lot improved, or his aspirations stoked, in confounding ways — and a satisfying ending that sent Jake out of the country and Max, accepting that he had been sold out by his brother, off to prison.

The second season, in which Max was released and pursued his improbable campaign of revenge against the Lynches, was over-plotted and overwritten, full of action-halting speeches about life and Leith. And it suffered from the absence of Jake for more than half the season — Max’s fervor was not nearly as moving or entertaining without his brother there to react to it.

The brothers are together from the start of Season 3, which puts them at the lowest, most perilous point they have reached so far. And it is largely a return to form, a suitable send-off for the battling McCalls. Kenny, Teddy, Stevie and Sheila all return, and join Max, Jake, an honest cop (Isaura Barbé-Brown) and Kenny’s no-nonsense niece (Amelia Isaac Jones), in a coalition of the somewhat willing, to take on Maggie Lynch one last time. Forsyth has fully assimilated the lessons of the Coen brothers and the history of the caper film, and with an ending that lets in more sentiment than the show has previously allowed, he gives Jake and Max slivers of their Scottish dreams.

Mike Hale is a television critic for The Times. He also writes about online video, film and media. More about Mike Hale

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Who Let John Travolta Agree to the Trash Wallow That Is ‘Cash Out’?

On the rare occasion that someone talks john travolta into taking up his old position before the camera, it’s always either a favor for a pal who needs a job or an exercise in poor judgment that raises some financing for a bomb that otherwise would never be made..

John Travolta doesn’t act much anymore. Call it semi-retirement. On the rare occasion when someone talks him into taking up his old position before the camera, it’s always either a favor for a pal who needs a job or an exercise in poor judgment that raises some financing for a bomb that otherwise would never be made. This is the only reason I can think of for a trash wallow called Cash Out.

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In this time waster, the star plays Mason Goddard, a thug with a penchant for masterminding major heists like bank robberies, and an idiot brother with a talent for screwing them up. For suspense, Mason spends his life planning and negotiating chief larcenies and figuring out ingenious ways to make them work. For laughs, he’s got a part-time girlfriend named Amelia ( Kristin Davis ) who works for the FBI without his knowing it. (Pretty stupid for a criminal on the most-wanted list.) Amelia works hard to catch him with a pleasant side effect of champagne, caviar and sex. First, we see Mason trying to steal a valuable, once-in-a-lifetime sports car. He gets caught, and the experience so unnerves him that he retires and moves to an island to drink beer by the case and let himself go to pot, in more ways than one.  

Next, his idiot brother Shawn ( Lukas Haas ) tries in vain to talk Mason into making a comeback with one last “sure-fire”  caper—stealing from a bank in downtown Seattle a safety deposit box containing the combination for a fortune in cryptocurrency. When Shawn’s plan goes south, it’s up to Mason to rescue his kid brother while the cops and the FBI surround the bank, all under the command of Mason’s old lover, Amy. As the dumb plot thickens, so does this preposterous couple’s romance. While waiting for reinforcements, she orders a pile of boxes and serves the crooks and their nine hostages pizzas. You can sum it up with a few smiles, a weak premise that never pays off, and a narrative that is nothing more or less than a big piece of zero.

The moronic, one-dimensional screenplay by Dipo Oseni and Doug Richardson (two credits to forget immediately) is awkward and clumsy, and the jerky direction is by someone with the pseudonym IVES. I don’t blame him for wanting to keep his real identity a secret. It would be a shame if it got out. It’s nice to see Kristin Davis in a larger role than just a supporting sidekick on Sex and the City. As for Travolta, he shuffles through the whole thing scruffy and bald, without bothering to reveal anything about the character he plays. Cash Out provides a paycheck for John Travolta, but it’s nothing to write home about for the weary audience that suffers through it. If nobody cares enough to stage a career intervention, then it’s now up to John Travolta to rescue himself.

• SEE ALSO : ‘Under the Bridge’ Review: A Miniseries That Interrogates the True Crime Genre

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Cash Out Review: Travolta Doing B-Movie Heists Isn't All Nonsense

A sequel is already in the can, and fun supporting turns from Kristin Davis and Lukas Haas make Cash Out worth a harmless tune-in.

• Travolta and Davis showcase fun chemistry as a bold power couple with a twist in Cash Out .
• Haas adds reliable comedy to the heist flick, setting up potential sequels in this entertaining film.
• Expect formulaic fun with some twists, lighthearted moments, and familiar faces in this crypto-themed crime caper.

Don't you hate it when your ex is the hostage negotiator? That's just one of the pickles John Travolta's career-criminal persona faces in Cash Out , a new B-movie offering from Saban Films that's out this week. With perhaps his finest film to date, Pulp Fiction ​​​​​​, just celebrating its 30th anniversary , Vincent Vega has already been in the news as of late, and it's fun seeing him back in action for more criminal antics alongside fellow veteran actors Kristin Davis ( Sex and the City ) and Lukas Haas ( Babylon ).

Bonus points if you're already a fanatic of heist movies , perhaps even with some knowledge of the ever-evolving crypto space. Cash Out features additional familiar faces beyond its three stars and benefits from quick pacing. If you don't expect Oscar-winning content here, you might just have a ball checking this one out.

Cash Out (2024)

• Travolta and Davis' chemistry is fun to watch
• Solid setup for future installments
• Haas is reliably comical
• Formulaic and predictable
• Could have benefitted from some actual violent shootouts

A Modern Take On the Heist Genre

Like all promising heist flicks, Cash Out commences with a job gone wrong. Yes, it's all pretty formulaic stuff, but seeing veteran performers Travolta and Kristin Davis playing a sort of power couple (with a twist) is rewarding enough. They're well-dressed crooks out on a job to steal a fancy car or two, but when Amelia (Davis) reveals her true detective colors to Mason (Travolta), he flees and resorts to a quiet life on a remote lake seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

We leap forward in time, and that's when younger brother Shawn (Haas) tracks down Mason and, of course, has a job in mind to get him back in the game. We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us, as it goes. We all know where this is going, but there are some fun little twists and turns along the way, in terms of just how Mason finds himself getting sucked back into the suck — and by "suck," we mean "life of dangerous crime," of course.

No spoilers here, but one thing leads to another, and Mason is back in civilization. More specifically, a bank vault with his airhead brother Shawn, who claims he knows exactly where a ridiculously wealthy cryptocurrency wallet is being kept. They've taken bank teller Georgios (Swen Temmel) hostage, a seemingly harmless guy who's really bad at keeping a straight face. One can't help but laugh, in his defense, at these two grown men bickering with each other about how they're in over their heads for a job whose prize money is, of course, nowhere to be found. "I swear, it was supposed to be right here!" says Shawn again and again, in some form or another throughout the unnerving second act.

Why John Travolta’s ‘70s High School Sitcom Ended So Abruptly

Crypto with a splash of quavo.

For some lighthearted comic relief, hip-hop fans will appreciate seeing Quavo on the big screen as Anton, a.k.a. Shawn's big-mouthed colleague who's in charge of keeping the increasingly terrified hostages inside the bank at ease. Another familiar face here is longtime character actor Noel Gugliemi ( Bruce Almighty ) as fellow thief Hector, who is also in charge of keeping heavy artillery aimed at innocent bank customers. The only reason this movie is rated R is because of these guys' constant expletives.

The real thrills come from Mason communicating with his ex-girlfriend Amelia, who formerly posed as his lover for two long years as a literal partner-in-crime while actually working undercover with the feds to build an epic case against him. Their flirtation over the phone sends Amelia into disarray, as Mason entices her with "let's get outta here" kinds of plans after all this.

10 Recent Heist Movies You Probably Missed

But in the meantime, he needs "50 feet" of perimeter around the bank and pizzas delivered for the hostages while Mason's dopey brother Shawn tries to track down just where exactly the money behind the targeted crypto wallet is located inside the facility. Anyone out there who's equally puzzled as to how exactly this digital currency works might just laugh out loud watching these veteran thieves try to navigate the futuristic space.

As Haas recently told MovieWeb , Cash Out 2 is already in the can, and frankly, we're not surprised. Sure, it's straightforward, somewhat predictable, and formulaic stuff, but Travolta bickering with crooks and exes about "knocking the hustle" in this digital age can be pretty darn entertaining at times. Davis was the sleeper favorite on Sex and the City , and it's a hoot seeing her back in action, even if her Amelia persona is slightly less scandalous than the infamous Charlotte York. Emphasis on "slightly," since she still has some tricks up her sleeve here. Watch out!

From Saban Films, Cash Out will be released in theaters, on demand, and on digital Friday, April 26.