Don't Turn Out the Lights

School friends reunite for a birthday outing to a music festival. One of them brings his new roommate who is a Marine. They are driving an RV. They get harassed by a couple of trucker creeps who push them onto a side road. They get lost and then stopped in the middle of nowhere.

I like the start. I like adding a newcomer to this annoying group. That has potential to stir things up. The two trucker creeps are standard. It's a nice way to strand the group in the middle of nowhere and the countdown to festival forces them to keep going. For a low-budget horror, it's fine.

When the RV stops, the movie starts on a long descent. The story just throws a lot of non-sense horror tropes at this thing. Some of it is at cross-purposes. None of this is particularly interesting. It is just one victim after another. The movie is throwing everything and the kitchen sink at this plot. It gets tiresome.

Much like everybody else bashing this movie, I will too. All for the same reason. Horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE acting.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if I never see any of these actors in any other movies.

The most annoying characters I've ever seen in a movie.

And overly long sections of nonstop screaming. That got old really fast, and kept on going and going throughout the movie. Yes, it's a horror, but still. They were all screaming from the beginning of the movie before anything happened.

I spent the whole movie hoping they'd all get killed off just so they'd shut up.

The movie should have been titled "Please Turn Off the Screaming".

Do not believe the hype. This movie is a mess, it pays homage to the cult classic film Race With The Devil with the snake scene, but other than that it was all over the place. Friends take a road trip in a RV to a musical festival. Things start to unravel without explanation as they find themselves fighting to survive. The premise was a long and boring story that led up to a flat ending. I think the high scores on this movie are from friends and family of the actors, Director and production crew. What was really happening? I felt time was wasted watching this movie. Time that i can't get back.

Couldn't get past the constant obnoxious yelling and the insincere acting. Turned it off after 25 min.

It seems like they tried to do the typical group of friends go off to celebrate a weekend and get killed one by one but the characters are so loud and obnoxious that we just couldn't watch anymore.

Also the music is too loud and obnoxious and just doesn't fit with certain scenes.

I really wish we could've gotten through the movie because the movie cover and trailer seemed like it would've been really good.

I would've liked to see the characters slow down, be sincere and take the role seriously (loud and aggressive does not mean you're doing it right).

Don't Turn Out the Lights, directed by Andy Fickman, takes what could have been a decently creepy premise-a group of friends trapped in a RV stuck in some haunted woods where the ghosts only appear in darkness-and somehow manages to make you root for the ghosts to win. Why? Because the characters are so insufferable, you're practically begging for them to get picked off.

Let's start with the ensemble cast of what can only be described as the most obnoxious caricatures of human beings imaginable. There are so many scenes where their behavior doesn't make any sense, filled with long, boring, and tone def conversations when they should be fighting for their lives. Seriously, you've just lost a bunch of your friends to an unseen malevolent and violent force, time for some giggles and sharing your thoughts? Why are you suddenly so calm and relaxed immediately after being terrorized? It makes no sense.

It's as if the writers have forgotten what makes a character likable. The whole crew is soooo dumb, and generally being unbearable that any emotional connection to them is impossible. Remember when horror movies used to have characters you actually cared about? Now, it's like the scriptwriters actively want us to hate everyone. At least that way, we don't feel bad when they inevitably meet their gory demise.

And let's talk about how nobody in this movie has any self-preservation instinct whatsoever. They spend a solid 30 minutes of screen time making the worst decisions imaginable. Don't go into the basement? Guess where they're going. Don't split up? Of course they split up. The ghosts don't even need to try-they're practically begging to be haunted.

Would I recommend this; No, Don't Turn Out the Lights is a masterclass in how to make your audience want to flip the switch off on the entire cast. It's like Hollywood forgot how to write characters you can root for, and instead gave us a group of people we'd rather see disappear into the dark.