Tag: David F. Sandberg

REVIEW: Shazam! [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Come home. Two boys, decades apart, are taken to a magical realm known as The Rock of Eternity to confront its last wizard guardian (Djimon Hounsou) protecting against the seven deadly sins. One (Ethan Pugiotto‘s Thad) is revealed unworthy of becoming this magician’s champion because his soul isn’t pure. Too much anger and resentment for a belittling father and brother fills him with a desire for power, this latest rejection the final straw that ignites his devolution towards evil. The other (Asher Angel‘s Billy) can’t be tested since the darkness…

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REVIEW: Annabelle: Creation [2017]

Jared Mobarak

“Dear diary. Today I came home.” You can’t blame audiences for being skeptical about a prequel to a prequel to James Wan‘s acclaimed The Conjuring when the first proved a huge step down in quality. There was no way Annabelle would equal the level of contemporary horror classic that Wan’s look into the paranormal via Ed and Lorraine Warren possessed, but the hope was that it would come close. Not only did it create a whole new mythology around the titular doll that flittered with rendering everything we had learned…

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REVIEW: Lights Out [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Are you doing this to help him or hurt her?” The story behind Lights Out is one many YouTubers aspire towards because it sees Swedish filmmaker David F. Sandberg evolve from three years of super short online scares to a seat beside contemporary Hollywood horror king James Wan. You could call his three-minute original from 2013 a “proof of concept” as it exists as the introduction of a monster seen only in the dark without any real context or story necessary. In fact, Sandberg’s feature debut pretty much recreates this…

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REVIEW: Lights Out [2013]

Jared Mobarak

It’s a bona fide YouTube to Hollywood transformation story for David F. Sandberg who along with actress Lotta Losten has been creating ultra-short horror treatments on both the Google-owned platform and Vimeo since 2013. It started with Cam Closer and has continued all the way into this year with Closet Space en route to his digital award-winning Lights Out earning a big screen, feature length adaptation (and the director’s chair to another James Wan-produced picture in Annabelle 2). These things are around three minutes long and they pack in creepy…

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