How Lights Out Writer Stretched Fear of Dark Premise to Feature Length Hit

The 2014 short version of Lights Out teased a primal horror hook grounded in universal fear: people freak out in total darkness. After director David F. Sandberg uploaded his YouTube mini-thriller about a monster who pops up when the lights go out, the clip attracted 3.2 million views and caught the notice of Hollywood producers. When they enlisted screenplay writer Eric Heisserer to expand the short, he faced a daunting question: how do you stretch a two-minute,