David Sandberg

Would the horror genre work as the basis for a cinematic universe? It’s an interesting question. While horror films are certainly no strangers to sequels and prequels  —  there are eleven Friday the 13th movies, after all, and most of them are pretty much unrelated outside of their central villains  —  they are fairly reliant on individual characters to support the weight of new movies. There’s not enough depth to the Friday the 13th franchise to make a movie thatdoesn’t feature Jason Voorhees; for a horror film to truly inspire its own cinematic universe, you’d need a B-roll of characters who could each terrify audiences in their own right.

Whether you choose to overlook the accusations of whitewashing levied against Paramount’s upcoming Ghost in the Shell movie is entirely up to you, but there are certainly some who are rooting for the film to open doors for other anime projects. Studios aren’t exactly hot-spots for innovative thinking; if Ghost in the Shell bombs next weekend, there will no-doubt be executives at Paramount who claim the only real lesson is that American audiences don’t like Anime. That would be a real blow to fans of the long-gestating adaptation of Akira, the seminal 1988 animated movie by Katsuhiro Otomo that has been an inspiration to countless science fiction movies and television shows that follow.

Full disclosure: I’m afraid of the dark. As soon as I walk into a darkened room I rush to the nearest light switch. I’ll use my phone’s flashlight to guide the way if the switch is far, and sometimes I’ll leave all the lights if I’m home alone. Your eyes play tricks on you in the dark – What was that? Oh, just the cat. Wait, I don’t have a cat! There’s security and comfort in being able to see your surroundings, which makes the premise of David Sandberg‘s ‘Lights Out’ even more terrifying.

In addition to directing The Conjuring 2, James Wan produced another horror film that’s also hitting theaters this year: Lights Out, the directorial debut of David Sandberg, based on his creepy short film of the same name. The first trailer is here, and it’s definitely something you want to watch with the lights on. But don’t feel embarrassed about it — everyone is afraid of the dark.