The darkness isn’t empty. It’s hungry
Don’t Turn Out the Lights (2024) is a nerve-fraying supernatural horror film that transforms a childhood fear into a full-blown waking nightmare. It taps into the primal terror of darkness, where every shadow breathes, and silence isn’t empty—it’s watching.
The story follows Mira Alvarez, a sleep-deprived single mother who moves with her two children into an aging countryside home left to her by a distant relative. On the surface, it’s a fresh start. But almost immediately, something feels wrong. The lights flicker. The air grows heavy at dusk. And her youngest son begins whispering to someone—or something—that only appears when the lights go out.
At first, Mira dismisses it as trauma from the move, or imagination stirred by candlelit nights. But then the blackouts begin—first small and local, then citywide—and with every moment of darkness, they grow stronger. Mira begins uncovering fragments of a journal hidden in the house, written by a former resident who claimed that a “light-feeder” lives between moments of illumination, growing bolder the longer it's ignored.
As supernatural events escalate—from objects moving on their own to shadow figures crawling across the ceiling—Mira turns to Jonas Crain, a paranormal expert who believes the entity is not a ghost, but an ancient energy parasite awakened by emotional trauma and drawn to electrical decay. The more fear it senses, the more power it gains.
Now Mira must keep the lights on, her family together, and her sanity intact. But the longer the bulbs burn, the closer the shadows creep. And once the lights go out for good… there’s no turning them back on.
