Seen yesterday at the 2015 Fantafestival, Lightless is clearly intended as a a sort of teaser for something longer, perhaps a TV series, and therefore doesn't care so much about telling a story, but rather focuses on building up a suspenseful, at times chilling, atmosphere. Which it does quickly and, at least in part, quite convincingly. There's a psychiatrist who's treating a young woman affected by a fear for dark places. She is convinced something horrible will occur if they turned off the lights in the room. And until here, Lightless is not particularly original as we have seen a therapist treating someone for similar phobias many times in movies before. But past this initial premise (there was at least another short at the Fantafestival who had a similar underlying theme), Lightless takes off (obviously, only once the lights in the therapy room are indeed turned off) in an unpredictable direction where we can't really figure out what is really happening anymore. Is the young woman alone in her predicament, or is this the beginning of some sort of epidemic? All of this, without one single special effect. Just atmosphere (and good actor's chemistry) leading to a disturbing finale that I honestly didn't quite understand, but that leaves many possibilities open for the story to continue.
