Lights (2015) Reviews

• Uneven and unfocused

  phenomynouss2018-02-10

  Rather surprised to be the first review, as I've seen plenty of other largely unknown movies littering Amazon Prime or Netflix get tons of coverage. This particular one isn't horrible like some I've seen or even poorly made. It could easily be something you would see put out in theaters given the high production quality. But the problem with this film is it is uneven and unfocused. The description ostensibly makes it seem like it will be a Found Footage type sci-fi horror film, but instead, inexplicably, the movie begins as a conventional movie, filmed in 24 fps, with moody music and characters and the like. The plot involves a woman trying to find her friends after they disappear on a camping trip of some sort, leaving behind nothing but a memory card of footage they shot along the way. So on top of the typical "Found Footage" routine we get a regular movie about the people trying to find the people in the footage playing out more like a regular mystery thriller than sci-fi. In fact, the sci-fi aspect is almost nonexistent until literally 1 hour in (out of a 90 minute film). By that point, the Found Footage subplot has gone absolutely nowhere. Once we actually return to the Found Footage aspect, so much of the "main" plot has advanced that the rest of the Found Footage is completely unnecessary. There's no longer any mystery, no longer any suspense. It's like as if Star Wars had told the story after the fact, with the destruction of the Death Star being described after the fact, with all the deaths and all the details and everything concluded, only to then show us the actual battle immediately afterwards. On a more technical level, the constant shifting between the Main plot and the Found Footage is constantly immersion-breaking, as each line just looks and sounds completely different, to the point where they're not even filmed in the same aspect ratio. It's never something you get used to and it just leaves you constantly wondering why they didn't just pick a single storytelling style and stick with it, instead of trying to graft on a "Found Footage" film onto a conventional movie film. It almost always ends up failing at both.