A contained horror, Andy Fickman’s “Don’t Turn Out the Lights” features a large SUV that serves as the setting for the rest of the narrative. Its claustrophobia lies in the slowly contracting safe space that the hostages find themselves in as they embark on a journey to a music festival that they do not quite reach. The friends grow into strangers as mysterious creatures lurk outside in the dark for which there are no explanations.
The article contains spoilers.
Don’t Turn Out the Lights (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Carrie is invited to her long-time friend Olivia’s birthday celebration, where she meets her other friends Gaby, Chris, and Sarah. Olivia surprises her gang with the announcement that she has gotten passes to the coveted Blue Light Music Festival for all of them. To get to the festival, Olivia’s boyfriend, Michael, has even managed to get hold of an RV. Michael arrives with his friend Jason, an ex-Marine. Soon, the group throngs the RV, which already has its fill of booze and drugs.
What happens when the friends brush with the rednecks?
The group, except Olivia and Michael, alights from the RV for their pit stop, a gas station. At the gas station, Sarah and Gaby are invited by lewd catcalls from perverted rednecks. The girls enter the gas station and are spared for the time being. On their way out, the men try to harass and forcefully impose themselves on Gaby. Chris and Jason fight with the men and leave the gas station.
While on the road, the rednecks chase their RV with their truck. One of them directs their gun at Jason, who is driving the RV and shoots. This causes Jason to swerve into a road off the highway. Carrie tries to ring 911, but Olivia begs her not to call the police as that would lead them to get arrested in turn due to the drugs they have in the vehicle. Meanwhile, Carrie and Jason seem to get closer as friends.
After being lost in the woods for some time and without a signal, the group goes by hunch and picks one way from a bifurcation. Carrie realizes that ever since their vehicle hit this road, she has not encountered any living entity. There is a car left unattended in the middle of the road, which concerns Carrie, but Gaby is not ready to buy into her concerns. The group finds a diner when the night falls and stops there for quick directions.
The mysterious diner
Carrie and Michael enter the diner and are invited by quizzical gazes. The diner patrons in their middle ages seem cold, unresponsive, and quite eerie in their constant staring. Carrie asks the bartender for directions, but his curt reply is to turn around and return to the highway. Michael tries to explain the difficulty of following that plan, but the man is uninterested. Carrie thinks he is just rude as they have not ordered anything from the place, so she tries to place an order for a large meal. The man, however, is gung-ho on making them leave the place.
The man’s uncooperative attitude infuriates Michael, and he turns to the others at the place for help. However, when the man holds out a gun, Carrie and Michael have no other choice than to leave. As Carrie boards the RV, she notices the taillights of a truck that looks exactly similar to the one owned by the rednecks at the gas station.
That thing in the dark
The group is quickly back to their spirits as they hit the road again. However, further down the road in the woods, Michael, who is driving the vehicle, forcefully goes to a halt. A thud stops the vehicle, but Michael is unsure what he has hit. Michael freaks out as he sneaks away the RV from his uncle, but Olivia is unaware of this secret. This causes a little conflict to arise between the couple. Michael ventures out of the RV to check on the casualty despite Jason’s warning against it. Michael goes out with a torch, checks on the engine, and gets the vehicle to start again. As Michael nears the door, he notices something in the dark outside others’ field of view.
Something happens to Michael offscreen, and only Olivia witnesses it. Following this, Olivia goes catatonic. Carrie, Jason, Gaby, and Sarah hold their breath as they hear distant ghostly screams calling out for Michael in the woods. Jason decides to venture out in the dark, this time with a gun.
Chris, on the other hand, has passed out due to being too high. Even Jason is not spared as the girls hear gunshots in the dark. In his final moments, Jason returns briefly to ask the girls to evacuate the vehicle and run, but he is sucked into the dark. Sarah takes the wheels and tries to drive away, but something causes them to stay in the same place.
How do the girls rationalize whatever is happening to them?
Given the bizarreness of the situation, Gaby is sure that Michael and Jason have set up an elaborate plan to fool them. Olivia seems to be the mastermind behind the prank. Sarah agrees, as only Olivia has seen Michael go missing, so chances are that he might be hiding in the woods. Then, Jason goes out to find Michale, and everyone hears gunshots. Again, no sign of anything has led to Jason pulling the trigger. The girls present more points to substantiate their claims.
The girls try to revive the catatonic Olivia with cigarette smoke. However, she remains as unresponsive as before. Right at that moment, something from outside gives the vehicle a violent jolt. The girls manage to wake Chris up for a brief moment. He wakes up and says that Michale and Jason are dead muck, to the girls’ shock, as he has been unconscious the whole time.
The girls notice that Olivia has woken up from her state and is on a call. She seems nonchalant, with no hint of malfunctioning. Carrie asks Olivia to leave her phone to them as they need to call for help. Olivia disappears without traces from the vehicle as the girls check for signals on their phones. Sarah notices Michael’s call on the phone, which Olivia has left behind. The voice on the other side repeats every word Sarah utters. The girls spot Olivia caught in the headlights. Soon, two Olivias are crying for help, and since the girls are not sure which one to help, she is consumed by the unknown force in the dark.
Don’t Turn Out the Lights (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
Who can they trust in a world of darkness and secrets?
Gaby decides to venture out with an axe to seek help. A professional runner, she asks the girls not to worry and stay put in the car with the windows tightly shut and secured with bolts. As Gaby climbs down the vehicle, she notices Olivia’s feathered jacket and pieces of flesh splattered all around the vehicle door. One of Olivia’s arms is still tightly holding onto the door handle.
The two lone girls, Carrie and Sarah, try to forget their past and comfort each other as friends. Soon, the light goes out. The TV automatically turns on. Sarah sees herself on the TV, but the camera, wherever that might be, does not catch Carrie. A figure in the dark lurks behind Sarah, but it turns out it is Chris. So, Carrie, Sarah, and Chris are now in a lone vehicle full of dead snakes and books on occultism in the middle of nowhere.
Is the Blue Light Festival a Gateway to an Endless Horror Cycle?
More bizarre events follow as Sarah is tormented by Olivia’s ghost, who screams the exact cries for help she screamed before dying. Sarah drives the knife into the creature approaching from the dark to save herself from a mysterious entity. Turns out, it is Carrie. Chris, too, dies getting chased by a mysterious car. Carrie gets the nightmares of Sarah throttling her and stabbing her over and over again. It becomes difficult to discern the real from the nightmare.
Sarah notices a tattoo on Carrie’s nape that resembles an occultist pentagram. Carrie asks Sarah to evacuate the vehicle and flee. Carrie manages to run out, but Sarah gets left behind and is consumed by a mist in the vehicle. It is dawn. Carrie is seen running through the forest. She trips on something and falls. To her horror, she realizes she has tripped on a severed limb, and going by the appearance, it seems to be of Gaby. Ultimately, she reaches the highway but gets fizzled in the air.
The film ends with another car full of friends attending the Blue Light Festival. They pass by the abandoned RV and have the same queries that Carrie had when she spotted an abandoned vehicle in the middle of the forest. It begins another cycle of horror attached to the Blue Light Festival. The chain of horror and the disappearances are intricately tied to the music festival, which the film does not explain.
