James Wan is a horror titan, and will not only be bringing his Conjuring sequel to theaters this summer but will also premiere his Lights Out at the upcoming Los Angeles Film Festival (June 8; get tickets).
Wan produced Lights Out under his newly formed Atomic Monster label, and enlisted David F. Sandberg to direct the pic that follows a woman who is haunted by a creature that only appears when the lights go out.
Ahead of the LAFF premiere and July 22nd theatrical release, Bloody caught up with Sandberg to talk about his debut entry into the horror world that spawned from his short film of the same name. The result was a warping zone directly to Hollywood’s “Final Level”…
I’ve been making short films with friends back home in Sweden since I was a child but I got sidetracked with animation and documentaries for a few years. In 2013 I felt that I really wanted to get back into live action genre stuff. I tried to get money from the Swedish film institute to make horror shorts but was unsuccessful. But my wife and collaborator Lotta Losten and I figured, screw it, we don’t need money to make shorts. We can shoot stuff just her and I in our apartment. So we made a short called “Cam Closer,” which was a fun experience.
Later that year we found out that the Bloody Cuts guys in England were having an online horror short film contest. We figured, hey short horror is what we’re doing now so let’s enter into that. Our submission was “Lights Out” which we just shot an evening after Lotta got off work. It went on to win Best Director in the contest which was great but we figured that was pretty much it. Well a few months later the film suddenly went viral online and before we knew it all these people from Hollywood wanted to get in touch.
It’s insane really that all this happened because of a two and a half minute short.
Lotta and I had this plan to keep making shorts, maybe get some money for a longer short. If that longer short was successful maybe develop that into a feature and maybe, just maybe, we could use that as a calling card in Hollywood.
Instead we stumbled upon warp zone and got to go directly to the final level!
Sandberg also spoke a bit about how Wan – director of Saw, Insidious, Dead Silence and The Conjuring – came aboard to produce, and how involved he was in the production.
The first one to get involved was producer Lawrence Grey of Grey Matter Productions. He had talked to James about finding something to do together and he felt that this would be a good fit. Lawrence sent the treatment I wrote with the full story to James, which made him come aboard. James said that he initially had been hesitant because yeah, I’d made a cool short but could I tell a 90 minute story? The treatment helped alleviate those fears. And yes, this will be the first film with the Atomic Monster logo on it, which is really cool…
James came up with some ideas early on, especially for the backstory of our antagonist. Also details like the neon light you see in the trailer. My original idea was to have the headlights of cars driving by outside sweeping across the room but the neon light created more of an on and off effect that I think we would have been difficult to achieve with headlights…
It was also funny when I pitched the crew that I wanted to light a scene with just candle light. I was met with, “No, you can’t do that! Got to light the film!” When we were shooting that scene James stopped by the set and was like, “You know, you should light this scene just with the candle,” and people on the crew responded, “Great idea, James! Let’s do that!”
That’s the guy I hope to become, the one who says we’re shooting it this way and people just accept it. Although I guess the danger is that it could lead you down the path of becoming George Lucas… “We’re shooting Jar Jar stepping in poo.” “Great idea George!”
Watch for more from Sandberg leading up to the LAFF premiere next week!
Warm Bodies beauty Teresa Palmer, Alexander DiPersia and Gabriel Bateman topline Lights Out, which was penned by Eric A. Heisserer (The Thing, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Final Destination 5).
In the film, “When Rebecca left home, she thought she left her childhood fears behind. Growing up, she was never really sure of what was and wasn’t real when the lights went out…and now her little brother, Martin, is experiencing the same unexplained and terrifying events that had once tested her sanity and threatened her safety. A frightening entity with a mysterious attachment to their mother, Sophie, has reemerged. But this time, as Rebecca gets closer to unlocking the truth, there is no denying that all their lives are in danger…once the lights go out.”
