As part of our continuing coverage of David F. Sandberg’s Lights Out, we caught up with the director of Warner Bros./New Line Cinema’s summer haunter to talk about the biggest mystery in the film – an invisible friend. But this ghost isn’t all fun and games like in Drop Dead Fred.

Lights Out is based on a short of the same name, which doesn’t have much of a story, as much as it’s atmospheric and scary. Sandberg explains to us how he approached adapting it into a feature, which stemmed from the invisible friend trope and asking, “What if it were actually a ghost or a demon?”!

“The lack of story felt like an advantage really,” he told us in an exclusive interview. “We didn’t have any feature plans when we made the short so we could just as well have painted ourselves into a corner with a story that would have only worked as a short. Now, since there was no story, the feature could be anything really.

“The first spark for the story was this idea I had to take the kid with an invisible friend trope and turn that on its head. You know how in many horror movies the little kid has an invisible friend that of course is really a ghost or a demon or something.

“I figured it would be much scarier if it was the parent that had the invisible friend. As a kid you’re so vulnerable because you’re dependent on your parents and not many people would believe a kid saying his mom is friends with a demon.

“That ultimately turned into a story about a girl who grew up with a mentally unstable mother. The girl couldn’t deal with her mom and her “friend” and ran away from home at an early age. Now as an adult she finds out that mom is going crazy again and her step brother is now in the same situation. So the girl has to go back home and deal with the situation but quickly finds out that maybe mom wasn’t crazy after all.”

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Warm Bodies‘ 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.”

Lights Out premieres at the LAFF this weekend before releasing in theaters on July 22.