(Photo captured from Reuters video)
REUTERS — When David F. Sandberg posted a short two-and-a-half minute video on YouTube, little did the Swedish man know it would be life-changing for both himself and his wife.
In the original ‘Lights Out’ film, Sandberg’s wife Lotta Losten turns off her corridor light but sees a shadow still there. She keeps switching the light on and off but still sees the same figure.
The film went viral after a Reddit user found it and spread the word about how good it was. Then after millions of YouTube hits, the short film came to the attention of Hollywood.
Speaking at the press junket for the film, Sandberg recalled “I was getting all these emails from Hollywood about people wanting to talk to us and like I had to make a spreadsheet of everyone who I’d talked to in Hollywood and what they’d said the last time and it was managers and agents and producers and studios and it was ‘How can a two and a half minute short do all of this?’ but it was every film maker’s dream, you know.”
Not only was a Hollywood remake of his short film on offer, but he was also allowed to direct.
“I was kind of surprised that they let me direct it because I’d never even been on a film set before,” explained Sandberg. “I don’t know if they thought I was more experienced than they thought I was because they’d ask ‘oh, do you have a Director of Photography you like to usually work with?’. No, I’m the one shooting it and editing it and all of it.”
Speaking of the film by Hollywood studio Warner Bros, Sandberg said “In Hollywood measures, it was made with not a lot of money so I think that enabled them to take a chance on me but to me whose used to making no-money shorts, it was all the money in the world.”
Whereas the original short film starred only Lotta Losten, the updated version focuses on a family plagued by a spectre known only as Diana who only has physicality when in the shadows.
The film begins with Martin (Gabriel Bateman) being plagued by the ghost, but soon his sister Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) and her boyfriend Bret (Alexander DiPersia) become targets.
For Australian actress Palmer, filming became more frightening than usual when the film’s crew brought in the actress dressed as the spectre for the first time.
Palmer explained “During a scene where I’m lying in my bedroom and the tattoo parlor lights are going on and off, going red and off, red and off and I look up where usually there’s nothing – I usually react to nothing – and there’s this black creature with straggly hairs and these fly-like eye contact lenses and she’s scratching vigorously into the floor and the first time I saw her I had such a physical reaction to her that I blew the take. I screamed and then everybody started laughing and I was like ‘Why did you do that to me?’ but she is, she’s mortifying and she’s what nightmares are made of.”
Maria Bello plays the role of the siblings’ mother, whose lapses into mental illness appear to have a connection with the appearance of Diana.
“Every country, every culture, every family people are dealing with mental illness and people aren’t talking about it and for me having struggled with mental illness in my own life it was such a gift to be able to bring that up in a really real way what it is to be caught inside your own mind,” she admitted.
‘Lights Out’ currently has the glowing score of 100% fresh on review aggregating website rottentomatoes.com and Sandberg has already been chosen to helm the sequel to the hit 2014 film ‘Annabelle’.
The film goes on release in North America on July 22.