When the Lights Went Out is based on the case of the Black Monk of Pontefract, which is debatably one of the most violent poltergeist cases in Europe. The Maynard family (not the name of the family in the Black Monk case…for whatever reason) move into their new council house in Yorkshire. After that, it isn’t long before things start moving around, lights start playing up, and odd noises are heard. At first, it is only the young daughter, Sally, who is witness to these events, but it isn’t all that long before the rest of the family begins to feel its presence too…

As far as spookiness goes, When The Lights Went Out is simply superb. The poltergeist activity is more typically creepy and ominous than it is out-and-out furniture throwing and ghostly apparitions – kind of like the original The Grudge, before it got retarded. When The Lights Went Out feels like a more refined, more realistic version of Insidious (and I loved Insidious).  The slowly swinging lamp at the top of the stairs is genuinely creepy…and the section in which Len (the father of the family) is accidentally trapped in the coal cellar with a unseen, evil entity is one of the tensest and most horrifying ghost sequences I’ve ever seen on film. 

Sally, the daughter of the Maynard family, is the focus of a lot of the paranormal activity, and most of the narrative. As the haunting progresses, she gains no respite…harrowed at home and ostracised at school, she finds a friend in the local school “weirdo”. Their friendship is endearing, and at times, almost heartbreaking. It’s a sad fact that many of the victims of hauntings and poltergeists do find themselves shunned by former friends and neighbours, whether they genuinely believe to be cursed, or simply because they think they’re making it all up – as certainly happened to the Hodgson family during reign of The Enfield Poltergeist, and the Pritchards during the haunting this film is based on – and it was nice to see a horror film that actually touched on that. It gave the family deeper characterisation, rather than just being relegated to ghost and special effect fodder. 

As is often the case with ghost story films, there’s only so long they can stretch it out before there has to be an action-packed coda, and When the Lights Went Out sadly also suffers from this. The sub-plot to get the vicar involved is played for cheap-laughs, and the attempted exorcism feels rather hack from start to finish. A shame, really, as it was all going so well until then. There’s also another scene after that that feels even more unnecessary, as the producers try to squeeze another scream in, when it would have been much better just to have left it alone.

Ghost stories do not (with a few notable exceptions) do particularly well as films, as what makes them work as either novels, short-stories or campfire style urban legends is that they are usually unexplained, often half-glimpsed, with subtle shivers rather than big screams. When The Lights Went Out does a very good job of getting this to work on the big screen, but the ending is a real disappointment.  The king of ghost stories is still Australia’s Lake Mungo, but When The Lights Went Out is definitely still worth watching for all horror fans.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

Anyway, the bit in Titanic where Leonardo DiCaprio slides off of the door or bit of wood or whatever it is and sinks down to his watery grave?  How much better would it have been if he’d leapt back up out of the water like Jason at the end of Friday the 13^th?  I mean, this is James Cameron!  He gave the world Aliens!  He can do jumps and scares, if he wants to!  What the hell is this soggy romance about?

So, Chris Pauls and Matt Solomon have given us Deck Z: The Titanic, a story which singularly fails to capitalise on the fact that there are dead and dying everywhere, and instead decides to shoehorn a tired old “oh, no, not a T-Virus-like-thing escaping into a confined space” story.  I’m not sure exactly why they looked at a genuine tragedy like the sinking of the RMS Titanic, in which at least 1,490 people were deaderised in a horrifying manner, and then proceed to just chuck some zombies in for cheap laughs and tittering. 

Is it just me that’s had enough of these shitty “Situation X + Monster Y” novels that have been gradually filling up the shelves since the comedy abortion of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies shambled its way into view?  It’s the laziest form of cut and paste horror writing, and – while it’s not Shaun Hutson levels of derivative – it is a rather feeble nonetheless.  

Anyway, there’s a scientist, named Theodor Weiss (magician’s tip: Never trust a guy with the surname ‘Weiss’), and he has this T-Virus knock-off, and it turns people into zombies.  The military want to use it as a weapon, and he tries to sneak it to America, aboard The Titanic.  Chaos ensues, people are bitten, some minor concessions towards pathos are made, and a bunch of mildly interesting characters try and escape from the sinking boat.  Along the way they learn to live, laugh, love, languish, liquorice and liger.  Probably.

Some of the characters are enjoyable.  Louise and Weiss, in particular, show the most humanity throughout, but the rest of the cast appear to be mere exercises in stiff upper lippedness and shooty-bang-death-killeration statistics.  The zombies aren’t especially scary, and while the action scenes are sometimes enjoyable, there’s never any real attachment or involvement for the reader in what’s happening.  I just couldn’t find myself able to care about what happened to most of them.  Probably not helped by the fact that I was already resigned to the fact that they were probably going to drown or freeze to death in any event. 

On the plus side, it’s very short.  On the down side, it’s very short (barely 220 pages).  Normally I don’t make a big deal of price, but…£9.99 for 200 pages?  Really?

Rating: 4 out of 10 stars