Don't Turn Out The Lights (2024) -- My take on the movie with spoilers!

 

Plot: A group of friends heading to a  music festival encounter a bizarre event on an abandoned road.

My Take On The Movie

If you're looking for a movie with no explanation about what is going on and tons of screaming, then this is the one for you.

The trailer wasn't impressive to begin with, and the movie isn't any better. It could have been, though, if they had focused on the mystery behind the bizarre event rather than the friends constantly screaming.

Don't Turn Out the Lights is derivative and relies heavily on stereotypical characters that must plod through a half-baked storyline.

Nevertheless, it makes good background noise if you are engaged in a different activity. If you're doing something important, however, you may want to turn the volume down during the screaming scenes.

DON'T TURN OUT THE LIGHTS Movie Plot

The movie begins with Carrie meeting up with Gaby and the two declaring their love for each other so much in front of the park visitors. No one even turns around to look at them.

It is their friend Olivia's birthday, and she has set up kiddie decorations. There are other friends joining the party—Sarah, Chris, Michael, and his roommate, ex-marine Jason.

Olivia announces she has tickets to the Blue Light Festival and that her boyfriend Michael has secured his family's RV for them to all travel together.

They all get in, and Carrie tries to flirt with Jason, but he barely shows interest.

The friends are all obnoxious, and you may find your patience wearing thin as at least half an hour is given away for these characters to do nothing but behave like insufferable college students.

To make matters worse, these friends get into a tiff with some truckers. Again, these are pointless plot points that add nothing to the main story.

Basically, the truckers make cat calls to Sarah and Gaby, who I sult them, which piss them off. Jason takes them all down with a vibrator. Carrie is obviously impressed.

Olivia and Michael are engaging in some private time, and Chris sulks because he wasn't invited to partake.

Carrie makes a useless conversation with Jason about the price of gas and buying a Honda instead of filling up this vehicle.

They all finally move on, only to be followed by the truckers who want revenge. Jason uses his neat ex-marine tricks to get them off their trail but ends up damaging the RV a bit, which makes Michael upset.

But Sarah promises to use her credit card to help fix it, and off they are on their way.

But now they aren't sure which route to take, and their cell phones have no service.

Jason finds a map in the compartment and suggest they keep moving ahead rather than go back to the truck stop. The girls think their GPS was pointing ahead, too.

And so, off they drive ahead.

On the way, Carrie spots an abandoned car and remarks that it is too nice to be left on the side of the road. Her friends call her dumb and that who care what happened to the owners of the car.

As luck would have it, they get lost.

They find a pub and stop to ask for directions. Carrie and Michael head inside and are taken aback when the locals grow quiet.

 

 The bartender is aloof, and when Micheal asks for directions, he tells him to go back the way they came.

Carrie tries to cut the tension by saying that she is going to order a lot of food. She thinks that by spending a lot of money, the bartender would get impressed and turn helpful. She's wrong. The bartender tells her they are closed.

Michael finally understands that the locals are being racist and tries to get the customers to help him, but none of them do.

Michael and Carrie return without directions and food. Michael tells his friends that he would have taken all those racists down, but no one actually buys that as they keep driving forward.

The girls play F- Marry or Kill. Olivia says Chris is well-endowed, which pisses off Michael and puts him further in a bad mood.

Finally, the RV breaks down in the middle of the road. By this moment, Chris has passed out from using too much. Carrie sticks her head out, and her hands are grabbed by someone who vanishes.

Michael thinks he may have hit something, but when he goes to check outside, he can't see anything. He checks the engine and then closes the compartment, and voila, the RV is working again.

He starts to walk toward the door, and Olivia follows him. But suddenly, he disappears. Olivia goes into shock, and Jason helps her lie down and put a blanket on her. He then decides to do some investigating himself and takes out a gun he says he found along with the map. The girls are going crazy, but he assures them that he doesn't want to kill them. He goes out and disappears for a bit. Gunshots are heard. The girls scream.

Carrie, the negative friend, wonders if it is Jason shooting or someoneelse  shooting Jason.

Jason returns and is covered in blood. He manages to say, Run, before he is snatched away.

There is more screaming. 

The girls are terrified, but Gaby and Sarah come up with the thought that the guys may be playing a prank on them all since they are in the middle of nowhere when literally everyone at the pub had told them to turn back. Carrie finally believes them.

This scene wastes a lot of screen time and could have been edited out.

Nevertheless,  convinced that Olivia is also on it, they use cigarette smoke to catch her since she is allergic. When Olivia doesn't respond, the girls realize that whatever is happening is real. They try to wake up Chris, but he doesn't budge.

Olivia wakes up suddenly and tries to make a call. The girls think their phones are working, too, but they are not. Olivia thinks Michael is calling her and goes out only to be trapped in fog.

She then manages to make it to the RV, but while the girls see Olivia a few feet away from them, they can hear her banging on the door. Unable to decide what is real, the three friends decide not to react. Olivia is killed. The door opens to show shreds of her laying on the road.

Gaby decides to make a run for it since their efforts to drive the RV before had caused them only to be pulled back to the exact same spot. Gaby shows that she's an athlete and is the only one who can make it out of this Bermuda Triangle-like area and get help.

And so off she goes.

Meanwhile, Chris is finally woken up after he seemingly overdoses. He finds the bizarre story hard to believe.

Sarah believes Olivia is coming to attack her and uses a knife to defend herself. She accidentally stabs Carrie.

He gets down the RV and tries to flag down an approaching car. He thinks Gaby has finally made it out and has come back with help. Boy, is he wrong.

He is crushed by the car and killed.

DON'T TURN OUT THE LIGHTS Ending Explained

Carrie and Sarah are the only ones left. After they've gotten all the screams out of their system, they begin talking to each other. But then, Sarah stabs Carrie repeatedly. Turns out it is a dream. Carrie can't differentiate between her dreams and reality.

At some point they had found black magic books that belonged ot Michael's family. Sarah thinks she spotted a tattoo behind Carrie's neck and thinks it was a pentagram. Carrie tells her it is just a star.

As things get heated, Carrie decides it is best that they both leave the RV. Carrie gets out, but Sarah is left in the RV. A mist fills up the vehicle and kills Sarah.

Carrie runs into the woods and sees a dismembered leg allegedly belonging to Gaby.

The day has come, and Carrie has made it to the main road. She cheers, only to vanish a second later. Apparently, she didn't make it out alive after all.

A car passes by, and the passengers see the abandoned RV. They wonder who left it behind, just like Carrie had wondered about the car she had seen.

The passengers are also headed to the Blue Light Festival.

The movie ends.

Thoughts...

So what was really going on? Was it black magic at play? Was the place like the Bermuda Triangle? Did the Blue Light Festival had something to do with it?

We get zero explanation for what is going on.

Scare Scale: 2/5