Lights Out 2 (2025) – The Darkness Never Left

Ten years after Lights Out terrified global audiences with its minimalist but spine-chilling concept, the nightmare has returned — and it’s more relentless than ever. Lights Out 2 (2025) expands on the original’s eerie premise, proving once again that fear lives in the shadows. Directed by a new but faithful voice in horror, this long-awaited sequel reawakens the terror that made you double-check your light switches for weeks.

The original Lights Out (2016), based on a viral short film, succeeded not with gore or monsters, but with a simple yet primal fear: the thing you can’t see… until it’s too late. Lights Out 2 doesn't just rehash that idea — it deepens it. This time, the horror follows a new family, still haunted by the twisted legacy of Diana, the vengeful spirit who can only exist in the dark.

Set years after the events of the first film, the story begins with Emma, a recently widowed schoolteacher, and her teenage son Ben, moving into an old rural house inherited from a distant relative. All seems calm until the electricity begins to flicker, and Emma starts seeing a figure in the hallway — only when the lights are off.

As the family’s mental state begins to unravel, they discover the house’s history is tied to the same psychiatric hospital where Diana’s condition began decades ago. The entity may have been banished once, but darkness is never truly destroyed. It waits.

While the first film used mental illness metaphorically, Lights Out 2 takes a more emotionally mature approach. Here, darkness isn’t just supernatural — it represents unresolved grief, inherited trauma, and the legacy of secrets left unspoken.

Emma, dealing with the death of her husband, begins to question whether her mind is fracturing or if something more sinister is targeting her family. Ben, isolated and introverted, becomes the new vessel of the haunting. His drawings of shadow figures, his fear of nightfall — they echo Martin’s behavior from the first film. But this time, the connection runs deeper.

The story cleverly weaves these emotional threads into the horror without slowing the pace. Grief becomes fuel for the entity. The weaker the family becomes, the stronger Diana grows.

What makes Lights Out 2 so effective is its commitment to pure, sensory terror. Director Julian Parks (in his feature debut) understands the art of restraint. You don’t need buckets of blood to be scared — just a flickering hallway light and a long shadow that moves when it shouldn’t.

The film expands the original’s lighting gimmick in clever ways: motion-sensitive nightlights, car headlights in the fog, flickering candles, faulty fuse boxes. In one of the film’s most nerve-shredding scenes, Emma must navigate a pitch-black school hallway with only the strobing flashes from a faulty emergency light — and you just know she’s not alone.

The visual style remains stark, grounded, and practical. Shadows are deep, thick, and suffocating. Every room feels like a trap.

Lead actress Naomi Scott as Emma brings grounded vulnerability to the role — she’s not a scream queen, but a mother clinging to her sanity. Young newcomer Zion Broadnax as Ben delivers a surprisingly layered performance for a teen actor, balancing fear, confusion, and courage.

But the true star remains Diana — or rather, her terrifying silhouette. Played by stunt actress Alicia Vela-Bailey (reprising her physical role from the original), Diana remains one of modern horror’s most frightening antagonists. Her movements are unnatural, twitchy, and hungry. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t negotiate. She waits in the dark… and then she’s there.

Without spoiling too much, Lights Out 2 ends with a gut-punch choice: destroy Diana once and for all — but at the cost of one’s memory, or perhaps one's soul. The final scene fades to black, and just before the credits roll… there’s the faint sound of footsteps in the dark.It’s subtle. It’s smart. And it leaves the audience in silence — just like the best horror should.

Lights Out 2 may have taken nearly a decade to arrive, but it was worth the wait. It respects what made the original work — fear of the unknown, fear of the dark — while adding emotional complexity, character depth, and even more inventive terror sequences.

In an era of horror over-saturation, Lights Out 2 reminds us that sometimes the simplest premise is still the scariest. Because no matter how much light you shine… shadows always return.