DON’T TURN OUT THE LIGHTS

**

Directed by Andy Fickman.

Starring Bella DeLong, Crystal Lake Evans, Jarrett Austin Brown.

Horror comedy, US, 109 minutes, Certificate 15.

Released in the UK On Demand on March 17th by 101 Films

Opening on lead everygal Carrie (Bella DeLong), waiting for her gang to join her for a birthday bash for Olivia (Crystal Lake Evans), we see her meet a creepy little girl singing eerily to herself. Carrie’s friends turn up, consisting of the walking “hilarious stoner” cliché Chris (Daryl Tofa-Soriano), Olivia’s boyfriend Michael (Jarrett Austin Brown), and strong-but-silent marine Jason (John Bucy). They pile into Michael’s RV to travel to Blue Light, a Glasto-esque music festival which is apparently the “hottest ticket around town”, offering “48 hours of nonstop partying”.

En route, halfway through the drinking games and drunk flirting, the crew meet the obligatory drunk hillbillies, who are credited succinctly as “Tattooed Nazi” and “Redneck Thug”. The latter’s Deliverance-style leering come-ons get one of the few good one-liners in the film: “Don’t you have a…cross to burn or book to ban somewhere?”

After fighting the inbreds off with a vibrator used as a club, which at least deserves a point for originality, the RV is chased by a truck attempting to drive it off the road, which they manage to outrun in a tiny reference to DUEL (1971). Director Andy Fickman (RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN) does some smart underscoring of horror tropes as our group of party-goers find themselves stranded in the woods. Fickman, however, does not seem sure whether he wants to make a straight-up horror-comedy or parody. It’s not entertaining enough to work as a teen comedy, despite a fair amount of toilet humour and sex comedy.  It barely qualifies as gory enough to be a horror either, with most of the terror coming from some creepy voices emanating from the forest, or doors or windows opening unaided.

There are some mildly effective horror moments executed with understated creepiness, but there is not enough explanation of what or who is after the protagonists, unlike, say, WRONG TURN or DIGGING UP THE MARROW, where there’s a backstory of how the evil got to be in the woods. Is Michael’s RV haunted, or is there someone or something in the woods looking for them? There are several suggestions of what’s plaguing them: the creepy little girl’s gang when we hear her voice coming through on the RV’s radio, the roadstop rednecks, or the pentagon suddenly found on one character’s neck matching the Satanic stuff found in the RV, but no answer is provided. The cast give it their all, but their enthusiasm doesn't quite create sufficient unease. 

Minus any kind of effective showdown, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ending will also leave most viewers mystified. This is followed by an unexplained credits sequence of footage of an unidentified character completing a menial task – who is this supposed to be, and why is it there? Despite the extra point for the vibrator fight scene and being self-aware enough to have two of the leads called Michael and Jason, this horror-comedy – like its vehicle – runs out of gas quite early on.

Nina Romain