It is very difficult to think of how that can be done, but other movies have done it, and the payoff is huge.

Then, perhaps working up to a punch line at the end so that suddenly the back- story rushes in on the audience in one moment, with one simple revelation. I think Lights Out could have used the guided hand of a third-party master horror writer, mostly revising the back-story revelations and using the character relationships to build suspense and mystery surrounding what is going on. It is very difficult to come out with anything scary that is original. So I am very critical of them, and the only ones I collect on disc are either fun (Tremors), scary (the Grudge), or both (An American Werewolf in London). I have been seeing horror movies at the theater since the 70's, and I am usually only interested in the ones that have a supernatural or fantastical element to them. I am a fairly difficult person to frighten. It also didn't have the storytelling chemistry of James Wan's own Insideous or The Conjuring movies. The ghost itself is creepy enough, but the overall movie didn't have the creative twists that we enjoyed from movies like The Boy, The Others, The Sixth Sense, and 10 Cloverfield Lane. I would say its chills rank somewhat evenly with The Woman in Black and It Follows, without being as original as the latter. Comparing it to masterpieces like The Exorcist and Poltergeist has no value. Based on chill factor alone, it ranks higher than Dark Water, The Forest, Paranormal Activity, The Others, The Babadook, and The Boy, and lower than The Ring, Ju-On / The Grudge, and other Japanese-styled ghost stories, as well as any horror James Wan himself directs.

It has a strong chill-factor but a somewhat average formula, and it could have used fewer back-story explanations to make it more mysterious, especially since those elements did not feel original. Lights Out takes some queues from Japanese-styled ghost stories, so it will be attractive to that audience.

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