Review #55: Nightlight (2015)

This review was originally written in October 2019.

October Horror Movie Review #3: Nightlight

It's no secret that many of the movies recommended to me this month are found-footage movies; so with this being the first I'll get this right out there: I don't like found-footage. In nearly every case I feel that it's a lazy excuse to put less money and effort into the product while still expecting people to enjoy it because it's more quote-unquote "immersive" or whatever. I'm sure I'll talk more and more about my specific found-footage gripes with future movies, but I will say that although this particular movie certainly shows some of those problems, it's circumvented many of them in ways that I appreciate.

Unfortunately I don't have much to say about this movie except for its use of the found-footage medium. The story is nothing particularly noteworthy (some friends are playing a game in the woods, the game turns too real and they get separated and whoops a ghost) and although the characters had more personality than the previous film, they were pretty much all fairly one-note.

I'll say some things I liked: despite being a found-footage movie in the meta-sense, Nightlight is NOT a found-footage film in-fiction. We're not seeing a video that the protagonist insisted on recording for some reason- instead, we're seeing the point-of-view of her flashlight (or possibly something more- it's actually tied into the story in a way that actually felt really cool). I liked that instead of just being some generic spirit-in-the-woods or whatever, the malevolent force is (at least implied to be) a character related to the story and the protagonist. Compare that to something like Blair Witch, where it's just an evil ghost out in the woods, and I'd say that's actually a step in the right direction. Also, despite the film being a bit too horny for its own good, I liked the way the teenagers interacted with each other for the first portion of its runtime- it felt believable and it endeared me to what were otherwise pretty boring characters.

But let's look at the counterpoint of some of those points: Despite not actually being someone's recording of the night's events (later cut together by... whoever decides to edit some dead person's recording for maximum dramatic effect), the movie still has loads of nonsensical cuts and transitions and scenes that seem to serve no purpose except to pad the runtime. Some of the scenes felt scripted and rehearsed but many just felt (like so many found-footage movies) like the director said "just go improvise" and then took the best (question mark?) bits. When I try to think of movies that didn't need to be found-footage but still did it and did it well, I think of  Silent House- it's another film where the handheld camera isn't an in-universe camera, rather the movie is just made to look like it was found-footage. But in that film, they try to at least have everything seem like it's all one long shot; in Nightlight, we're constantly cutting and jumping for literally no reason. (I could be convinced that the filmmakers were cutting together multiple takes, if any of it felt like something that was shot more than once.)

This is all to say: Why did this movie need to be found-footage? There's a couple small instances in the film (particularly the fall into the river, and the long drop at the very end) that are visually striking due to the camera being a physical thing in the world, but is that worth the entire movie looking lazy and cheap as a result? I'd have to be convinced that those weren't just happy accidents resulting from the already-chosen found-footage nature.

Many times while watching this movie I thought to myself, "You know, this movie is actually pretty good" but then it occurred to me- I only felt it was good compared to most other found-footage films, and not that it was good on its own.

Hopefully not all of the found-footage movies I'll be watching this month will have as disappointed of reviews, but we'll see.

Overall rating: 5/10

If I could change one thing: Take the dog out entirely. The whole movie I was expecting the dog to get hurt and (spoilers) it does, eventually. I don't know what purpose the dog served except to create this exact sense of unwelcome dread.