SPOILER DISCUSSION

1.The film’s stand-out sequence happens at 23 minute mark. It opens with an establishing shout from the outside of Rebecca’s apartment; the red neon tattoo shop outside her window glows in cycles. Her room is caked in the red lights before they dissipate to darkness, an ebb-and-flow reminiscent of a similarly chilling sequence from James Wan’s Dead Silence.

She notices a small figure crouching in the doorway and calls out thinking it’s Martin. But then the figure disappears as the lights come back in; Rebecca now knows Diana is here for her. Diana leaps and is just about to claw Rebecca but the lights come back in, giving Rebecca just enough time to turn on the main lights and cast Diana out. Then she goes to her bathroom and stares into her mirror to collect and center herself – a callback to the start of the film and a confirmation of the depths of her trauma.

She looks at the carving Diana scratched out onto the floor and Rebecca is brought back to the site of her trauma. The room darkens, she gazes to the left, the camera tilts to the lift and reveals her bedroom from the past, eventually moving onto a view of a younger Rebecca drawing a similar image to the carving. The genesis of the darkness is brought to focus and the weight of what Rebecca has to fight is made abundantly clear.

2. While having Lotta in the opening is great homage to the original short the film is based on, not having her character tied in to the nature of Sophie’s depression is a poor formal choice that should have been addressed when she first barged in on Paul. If she had engaged in conversation and revealed that she was a confidante of sorts with regards to Sophie’s condition or was a friend of the family, then her first encounter with Diana being threatening but not lethal would tie into the reading of depression encroaching into other lives due to proximity and serve as a potential red herring on the nature of Diana proper.

This extends to the police officers and Bret as well. Neither set of character should have been immediately privy of Diana. Having Bret able to see and be threatened by her in the third act would be made more poignant as it would showcase his acceptance and incorporation into Rebecca’s personal sphere as opposed to just being another chain of scary events.

3. The suggested ending that Sandberg mentions sounds like it would do a much better job tying the thematic treads the grief story wants to tell. ^[1]Calvario, L. (2016, August 4). ‘lights out’: Director David Sandberg explains the film’s Shocking ending. IndieWire. Retrieved May 19, 2022, from … Continue readingAs is, having Sophie kill herself as a faux-victory of sorts is a nihilistic way to tell a tale on grief: depression ends up winning and is only bandaged over by death. Moving the story onto having Martin possessed by Diana and then being “saved” by Rebecca and Bret, finally overcoming the shadows as opposed to dying to them would make the familial aspects of depression more poignant.