The film had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 8, 2016, and was released in the United States and Canada on July 22, 2016, by Warner Bros. Principal photography for the film began in June 2015 in Los Angeles.

After the short film's success, Sandberg announced a feature film adaptation based on his short film. In the film, a young woman must confront her childhood fears to protect her brother from a vengeful supernatural entity holding a mysterious attachment to their mother. It is based on Sandberg's 2013 short film of the same name and features Lotta Losten, who starred in the short. It stars Teresa Palmer, Gabriel Bateman, Alexander DiPersia, Billy Burke, and Maria Bello. Sandberg in his directorial debut, produced by Lawrence Grey, James Wan, and Eric Heisserer and written by Heisserer. The feeling of dread, familiarity, sympathy, inevitability, and atmosphere was so well established within these 3 minutes, it makes me wish Lights Out was more well known by fellow horror fans.Lights Out is a 2016 American supernatural horror film directed by David F. And when I say I'm glad a film had a jump scare in it, you know it must be special. But the couple jump scares Lights Out uses I'm actually okay with because of how well executed they were. I'm not a fan of jump scares, I think they're typically very cheap ways to get some cheap short-lasting scares out of your audience and I have quite the aversion to their uncreativity. Where Lights Out shines is the mood, atmosphere, and emotion, and just how quickly is establishes it all (in under 2 minutes), and how it goes out with a bang. The cinematography is above average but also nothing incredible, the camera angles work and some are pretty clever and do a damn good job with the suspense, but is it something I've never seen before? No.

It deals with the 'darkness brings evil' aspect many horror movies touch bases with at one point in the film so there's nothing special about the idea behind Lights Out, it's the execution and cinematography. It's extremely simple and does nothing surprisingly well, but the fact that it's 3 minutes and so simple but still evokes that feel of horror is impressive to say the least. Lights Out is a tiny jewel which more horror fans should know about.

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