Lights Out | Through the Shattered Lens

Duffy (Frank Grillo) is haunted by the past. When he was serving in the U.S. military, he watched as his friends and fellow soldiers were killed in battle. Now that he’s back in America, he’s haunted by the memories and the trauma has left him incapable of finding peace. He’s angry and paranoid and restless. He drifts around the country, making whatever money that he can as a gambler. But when a poker game at a Los Angeles roadhouse leads to a physical confrontation, Duffy is offered a new opportunity.

Max (Mekhi Phifer) watches as Duffy defends himself and is impressed with what he sees. Max is a ex-con who works as a recruiter for underground fight clubs. Max recognizes the source of Duffy’s anger because Max’s brother was also a veteran who returned to America carrying the mental and physical scars of war. Max feels that he failed his brother but maybe he can make up for it by saving Duffy’s life. Max recruits Duffy as a fighter and gives him a place to live. Duffy and Max soon find themselves in conflict with an evil gym owner (Dermot Mulroney, making the most of a rare villainous role) and a corrupt cop (Jaime King) who is secretly in charge of the town’s underground fight scene.

Lights Out is a fast-paced and occasionally self-aware B-movie. I always find movies like this fascinating because they present a world where there’s an underground fight club located in every backroom and lumber yard. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there aren’t underground fight clubs. I’m sure they’re out there and I’m sure that there are some dangerous people involved in promoting them. I’m just saying that I kind of suspect that there might not be as many of them as there tends to be in the movies. I always find it interesting that so many underground fight clubs seem to have a “fight until the death” rule. I mean, it seems to me that would cause you to quickly run out of fighters. I also wonder what people do when they want to start an underground fight club but they don’t have access to an abandoned warehouse or any acquaintances in the Russian Mafia. I guess those people are just screwed.

While Mulroney and King definitely make an impression as the two over-the-top villains, Lights Out is dominated by Frank Grillo. Grillo has been lucky enough to be blessed with a down-to-Earth screen presence that allows him to be likable while also leaving little doubt that he is someone who can handle himself in a fight. He has the weathered good looks of some one who has seen some things but who hasn’t yet surrendered his humanity. He’s like the modern day version of one of those wonderful character actors who used to populate the gangster movies of the 1930s. Grillo’s tough sincerity and streetwise persona is well-used here. John Garfield had his Body and Soul. Frank Grillo has his Lights Out.

Never go camping!

Seriously, if there’s any lesson to be learned from the nearly 600 posts that showed up on the site through the month of October in 2023, do not go camping. If you take nothing else away from Horrorthon, I hope you’ll take away a strong disdain for camping in general and summer camp in specific. Seriously, the wilderness is full of monsters and summer camps seem to breed madmen.

Just consider R.L. Stine’s 1991 novel, Lights Out.

In Lights Out, Holly is spending the summer working as a counselor at her uncle’s summer camp and it absolutely sucks! Not only does the summer camp have a long history of weird events and tragedy but no one seems to be happy about Holly being there. Holly doesn’t like the outdoors and she doesn’t like bugs and she certainly doesn’t like snakes, even if they’re just made out of rubber. The other counselors, rather than trying to help Holly out, spend the entire time bullying her and then threatening her to keep her quiet. At one point, they even throw leeches at her! Seriously, who does that!? Who not only collects leeches but also throws them at someone!?

Why is everyone being so mean to Holly? Well, a lot of it because the two resident mean girls think that Holly is going to steal the attention of the male counselors. But Holly feels that there’s something even more sinister happening at the camp. Someone appears to be vandalizing the camp and trying to force her uncle to shut the place down. Eventually, one of the counselors dies when someone shoves her face against the pottery wheel.

Of course, the camp doesn’t shut down. It takes more than just one murder to shut down a summer camp. Things come to a head when, despite being terrified of the outside, Holly takes part in leading the camp’s nature hike. Why is Holly even working as a camp counselor? I know it’s because her mother demanded that she do something more than just hang out around the house during the summer but, seriously — there’s a lot to do in Shadyside! There’s so much Holly could have done!

The main message of this book is that camping sucks and I could definitely agree with that. If the girl on the book’s cover had red hair, she could have easily been me whenever I was up at my grandfather’s farm in Arkansas and I was trying to figure out if there was a snake in the nearby high grass or if all the hissing was just my imagination. As for the plot, it was basically Friday the 13th with a much smaller body count. (Christopher Pike would have killed off the whole camp. R.L. Stine is a bit nicer.) It’s a bit of a silly book but the message comes through loud and clear.

CAMPING SUCKS!