Movie Review ~ Don’t Turn Out the Lights

Even in the heyday of teen slasher flicks, those golden early ‘80s and their glossy revival in the mid-‘90s, the absurd plots and barely developed characters had a certain sweetness.  Embracing their low-budget and high-gore charm, none of these were aiming for Oscars, but they understood their assignment to deliver fun pulp in a tight package.

There’s been a pleasant uptick in intense, original horror so far in 2024 (The First Omen, Oddity, Longlegs, Late Night with the Devil, Cuckoo), and audiences continue to show interest in the genre, with a new generation hopping on board the terror train.  Every good run must end, and so goes the success rate of 2024 horror films with the release of the low-budget slasher flick Don’t Turn Out the Lights. 

Reminding us that bad ideas never die and only get repackaged, this bottom-of-the-barrel, no-budget turkey originally made the rounds as Blue Light but has been retitled for its debut on VOD on September 6. The filmmakers should have removed about 30 minutes while they were changing out the title as well because this overlong dud wastes a lot of your time and its potential, providing nothing new cinematically to its chosen genre.

Six college friends have reunited to celebrate Queen Bee Olivia’s birthday by packing themselves into an RV and traveling cross-country for the Blue Light Festival…which we can only discern must be some discount Coachella by how it is described.  Friendships in the group seem off-kilter before they’ve left the parking lot, and Olivia’s buzzkill boyfriend, Michael, has invited ex-marine Jason to tag along, and he’s hardly a Rhodes Scholar well versed in the fine art of communication.

As most road trips go in these films, what starts off as a joyful trek quickly disintegrates into a nightmare of racist truck drivers, wrong turns, and, before you know it, a breakdown in an inopportune location where the group is picked off one by one by a vicious unseen threat.

A derivative premise can be salvaged by a sly screenplay, nimble direction, and capable performances, but Don’t Turn Out the Lights is missing all three.  Each predictable beat is telegraphed far in advance, and by the time the group starts their petty bickering, instead of dealing with the more pressing threat, you realize you are on the road trip of your nightmares.  That’s more terrifying than anything screenwriter and director Andy Fickman (One True Loves) could have imagined.  What’s actually after the group becomes inconsequential because you’ll be rooting for the enemy to silence the back-and-forth arguing and complaining of characters we’re never allowed to understand beyond their thinly etched outlines.

Fickman is a director known for more family-friendly fare and sleepover-grade material like She’s the Man, The Game Plan, andPaul Blart: Mall Cop 2.  A few years back, he directed the filmed version of the UK stage musical Heathers broadcast on Roku (I saw it, I liked it, I wrote about it) but has switched gears dramatically with his first horror film.  His attempt to move into a new genre is woefully outside his comfort zone, a dismal faceplant for a director who knows how to craft aggressively mediocre comedy but can’t build effective tension.   The slow pacing really sinks this, though, and as much as the frantic action scenes try to raise the stakes, they are often incoherent and filmed so poorly it’s anyone’s guess what we should be looking at.

You almost hate to pick apart the performances because the material the young actors have to work with is so pitiful. Still, it’s another area where the film comes across as completely oblivious to where it could have been improved.  Ranging from cringe-worthy to flat-out painful, it’s high school-level work represented in a supposedly professional film.  I will be kind and refrain from calling anyone out by name, only to say that the lone semi-redeemable performance comes from Ana Luz Zambrana, but even her spirited effort can’t lift the rest of this dead weight.

The production feels cobbled together, a scarecrow of a movie sewn together with random parts and stuffed with useless material.  Filmed on locations that scream “We didn’t bother getting permits!” or the less-busy side of an unkempt parking lot, the night scenes are so poorly lit that you’ll find yourself squinting at the screen desperately trying to make out what’s happening.  Eventually, given the quality of the film, you’ll realize that not seeing what’s happening is actually a blessing in disguise.  I’d be highly shocked if Don’t Turn Out the Lights was filmed longer than over a three-day holiday weekend.

Perhaps Don’t Turn Out the Lights is what we get for feeling too confident that horror has fully turned a corner into the realm of inspired endeavors that can chill us to the bone.  Watching it, I was brought back to a darker time when it was nothing but low-budget dreck with little hope for the kind of quality creeps that something like The Changeling could elicit.  Punishing, long, and filled with the expected genre clichés, it doesn’t bother to twist to its self-aware advantage; this one needs to be left in the dark where it belongs.