Lights Out LAFF Coverage – Exclusive Photos and Interviews
Staci Layne Wilson
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Lights Out has been a much-anticipated movie event ever since the short upon which it’s based caused such a huge sensation following its posting on Reddit. The succinct, scary ghost story went viral, and the rest is history – Warner Bros. hired the writer/director to make a feature and is giving it a huge boost.
The studio went all out in getting Lights Out some limelight in the coveted L.A. Film Festival lineup, where there was a swanky party, red carpet, screening to a packed house, and then a Q&A with the filmmakers.
In attendance were director David Sandberg, producers James Wan and Lawrence Grey, and writer Eric Heisserer as well as stars Maria Bello, Gabriel Bateman, Alexander DiPersia, and Lotta Losten (who starred in the short and is the director’s wife and collaborator).
The movie is about a family who is haunted by a creature that only appears when the lights go out, expanding out from the short, which focused on a single character. “We made the movie for no money, in our apartment. We got to skip all the steps,” said David. He said he and his wife hoped someday to get funded by the Swedish Film Commission to maybe make some longer shorts and then someday after that maybe a feature. “It’s just amazing the attention we got from making a 2-1/2-minute short.”
Amazingly, the short piece was made for a contest and was rejected. “We made the short for an online contest, and it didn’t get selected,” David said. (However, David did win Best Director for the Lights Out show in a contest called Bloody Cuts… so we aren’t sure which contest he is referring to when he says it was not selected.) “It was posted on Reddit about a year later, and it went viral right around the time we forgot about it.”
Luckily, producers Lawrence Grey and James Wan didn’t forget about it. James said, “I thought it was incredibly smart and effective, but I never thought of turning it into a feature until Lawrence convinced me to come along on this ride. And then when I talked to David about it, even though he’d never directed a feature, I had complete confidence that he could do it.”
David helped develop the screenplay with Eric Heisserer. “It was good we didn’t create a mythology for the creature so we could do anything in the feature,” said the newbie director.
Eric was glad to have a lot of leeway. “Having seen the short film, I had a lot of questions. David did a lot of the heavy lifting before I came in to write the screenplay, though, because he’d figured out the thematic applications to Diana [the creature] as sort of a metaphor for depression and mental illness. Knowing that was the message underneath, it became easier for me to craft the rest of the characters in the dysfunctional family. We were able to show how, when you keep something metaphorically in the dark, it just tears apart the family and you are going to have to deal with it – hopefully not that way!” [laughs]
David was in for a little culture shock when he stepped onto the set for the very first time. “I was used to just picking up a camera, shooting what I wanted, and editing it together. So making a big studio movie the first time out, I had to learn to work with a lot of people and learn a whole new language. I had to learn to make storyboards to show people what I was thinking. I’d never done that before. I didn’t know how sets worked… I had to ask the first A.D., ‘When do I say “Action”?’ This was my film school, and I got paid for it.”
Maria Bello, who stars in the film alongside Teresa Palmer as her daughter, said, “I really responded to the character, and I think the movie passes the test that it really is scary, for me, when I watched it and was terrified by the opening sequence, which I am not in and didn’t know about. Diana is truly frightening.”
Eric says he loved creating a really scary antagonist. “To craft a villain that we found would be rich with mythology, we put our heads together to explore who she was in real life and how can we pick that apart? We love the subjective POV, meaning you don’t know how much of her backstory information you can trust, which is also true of anyone with, or adjacent to, mental illness because it’s all through their filter.”
Young star Gabriel Bateman said, “It was really great working with David because a lot of directors have been in it for a while, but he was just kind of untouched by the business, and that’s what made the rawness of the film [work so well].”
Alexander DiPersia, who plays the daughter’s boyfriend in the movie, adds, “It was wonderful working David. And not unlike him, it was my first time working with a big studio. It was super-collaborative. We made this really wonderful story that’s about family and love… and also some paranormal activity.”
Lights Out will be released wide on July 22, 2016.
Photos by Aaron Kai
Lights Out has been rated PG-13 for terror throughout, violence including disturbing images, some thematic material, and brief drug content. Check out the short film below along with the trailer.
For more info visit the official Lights Out website, “like” Lights Out on Facebook, and follow Lights Out on Twitter and Lights Out on Instagram.
Synopsis:
From producer James Wan (The Conjuring) comes a tale of an unknown terror that lurks in the dark. When Rebecca left home, she thought she left her childhood fears behind. Growing up, she was never really sure of what was and wasn’t real when the lights went out… and now her little brother, Martin, is experiencing the same unexplained and terrifying events that had once tested her sanity and threatened her safety.
A frightening entity with a mysterious attachment to their mother, Sophie, has reemerged. But this time, as Rebecca gets closer to unlocking the truth, there is no denying that all their lives are in danger… once the lights go out.
Categorized:News
