The horror film is one of those recurring assaults on rationality that the best vehicles (I surmise) secretly intrigue and shock audiences, year after year. I cite Psycho, The Shining (the movie) and The Silence of the Lambs. This season, James Wan’s The Conjuring 2 (on the latest reckoning) has made more than US$320m.The cultural pretence is that we have banished the supernatural to the gloomy rooms of quacks and New Age impresarios. No so. There are rolling waves of superfans out there.Wan’s record is impressive and Lights Out is a brief, scary reprise of classic ghostly images and characters. There is a standard creepy ghost-racked house in which a single mother projects or experiences unnatural illusions of persecution. Her children are the main victims but, were that all, the film would be straight-to-DVD fare. However, it has several unique characteristics that have led to the prediction that it will be the sleeper of the season.Variety believes so — and that the Australian-bo...
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