The backstory is one of many examples of Lights Out stretching out its premise to extremely thin points, sacrificing a more nuanced potential for the concept in order to over explain things to the audience. Of course, this is best represented in the physicality rather than the goofy backstory they elaborate on to give a rather rushed emotional context to her powers that never really lives up. There’s an animalistic raw edge to the character that doesn’t need to be spoken, one that’s driven by a fight to survive in a world out to destroy her for literally half of any given 24 hour period. The moments that are most effective for a monster this mysterious are when she blatantly stands or crouches in direct sight of the main characters. With a limited physicality and demonic eyes, Alicia Vela-Bailey does a phenomenal job of bringing the shadowy vapor to life as she haunts the doorways of our heroes. Instead, all stock is put directly towards the silhouetted creature that haunts them Diana. So clearly, Lights Out doesn’t put much investment in its clearly human characters. The only character in Lights Out with any common sense is Alexander DiPersia as Palmer’s boyfriend, who has the sensible idea to confront some of these issues and actually get the help of some form of law enforcement when needed. It doesn’t help that her younger brother is about as believable a child character as a lesser Peanuts side character or that her mother is more used for plot contrivance than any convincing emotional engagement. Even when she’s calling out Bello directly, it gives us even less investment in a character mainly used to exposit and do stupid things for plot reveals. Teresa Palmer’s actions are clearly made with blunt emotion and cat-like curiosity that has her fall into the usually trappings of a typical white horror film protagonist. Yet, that paper thin concept is really all Lights Out has for the narrative weight of these characters together. It’s an engaging one on paper, with an older daughter ( Teresa Palmer) trying to protect her half brother ( Gabriel Bateman) from the destructive nature of her mentally unstable mother ( Maria Bello, with the best performance for a plot devise in recent memory). Lights Out originally ran longer and had another ending where Diana returns, which rendered Sophie's sacrifice pointless test audiences hated this epilogue, so it was trimmed to the current version.Said characters are mainly centered around a rather broken family dynamic. Some read the unfortunate subtext that Sophie 'freed' her family from the burden of her depression by taking her own life, but Sandberg - who has suffered from depression himself - quickly stated this wasn't the message at all. The ending of Lights Out sees Sophie realize Diana is linked to the world through her, so to save her children she commits suicide. Sandberg intended to portray Diana as an embodiment of Sophie's depression, though the film's ending accidentally proved controversial in this regard. While light scares her off, towards the end of the film she can be seen via black light as a thin woman with horrible skin burns.

Lights Out reveals Diana's motive is to kill anybody seeking to get Sophie treatment, which includes her children. In death, Diana's spirit tethered herself to Sophie and has been with her since childhood, and later caused the death of her husband when he tried to get her help.

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