Aahana Swrup
The Andy Fickman horror film ‘Don’t Turn Out the Lights’ charts an intriguing tale of a friend group’s ill-advised venture into the woods. On Olivia’s birthday, her entire high school friend group—from stoner Chris and trust fund baby Sarah to the odd-one-out Jason—reunites for one big celebration. As a result, the gang co-opts an RV that belongs to Michael’s uncle and embarks on a road trip to the Blue Light Music Festival. However, a few bumps in the road send them down an unwise fork in the path. Consequently, as the group gets lost in the middle of the woods, Carrie’s concerns end up coming to life in the worst way possible. As danger lurks out on the dark road, Olivia’s birthday reunion soon turns into a living nightmare, leading down unimagined conclusions. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Don’t Turn Out the Lights Plot Synopsis
Olivia meets up with her friends, including her ride-or-die Sarah—much to Carrie’s annoyance—for her birthday celebration. Upon a brief meeting at a park, she reveals that she has tickets to the Blue Light Music Festival, which they will be attending following a 10-hour-long drive aboard an RV. Much like the RV, her boyfriend Michael also comes with a plus-one—Jason, his college roommate who is also a marine. As such, the gang commences on their road trip with high spirits. However, their excitement comes to a crash once they stop at a gas station to refill on fuel and snack.
At the gas station, two menacing redneck men catcall Sarah and Gaby. Although the girls aren’t afraid to step up to them, they quickly pose a threat once the altercation gets violent. Fortunately, Jason intervenes and fights back against the men, affording him and his friends the window to drive away. Still, the older men refuse to give up and chase the RV down in their truck. Once they attempt to pull a gun on Jason from the driver’s seat, the man has no choice but to swerve off of the Interstate highway. Once the gang comes to a halt by the roadside, Carrie floats the idea of calling the cops.
Nonetheless, this remains impossible on account of the various drugs Chris and the others have on hand. Consequently, Olivia convinces Carrie to drop the idea and simply return to the highway. Yet, this proves to be difficult since the detour has put them off-route without phone signals. As a result, the group picks a road to drive down at random, hoping it will put them back on the interstate. As nighttime settles in, they come across a roadhouse that Carrie and Michael visit to get directions and some food. However, to their surprise, the patrons inside the bar are incredibly hostile towards them, refusing to service them point blank.
Furthermore, when asked about directions, the bartender bluntly tells them to turn back around before pulling a gun on them. Once Carrie and Michael return to the RV, they presume the patrons are redneck racists and decide to stay on the path they have been on so far. Therefore, the road trip resumes with Michael behind the wheel. Yet, another misfortune strikes when the vehicle comes to an abrupt stop. Michael goes out to check with the assumption that they must have hit someone or something under the night’s darkness. Although nothing seems to be out of the ordinary, something strange attacks him by the side of the RV. Olivia, the only one who sees this unfold from the other side of the window, screams and goes into shock, entering a catatonic state.
Don’t Turn Out the Lights Ending: What is Outside the RV?
After Michae’s mysterious disappearance, the strange road erupts in distant, eerie noises of screams. As a result, Jason—the most combatively skilled one out of the group—goes out to check on his roommate. However, even though equipped with a gun, Jason ends up falling victim to whatever horror resides on the open road. As the sound of a gunshot reverberates in the night air, Carrie and the others are left to wonder about the demise of their friends. That is until a harried and bloodied Jason appears at the open door before he’s pulled away into the darkness by some unknown force. This elicits an appropriately freaked-out reaction from Carrie, Gaby, and Olivia—the only conscious ones aboard the RV.
Consequently, Olivia attempts to drive away while the other two try to shut close the RV’s door and windows. Nonetheless, whatever evil lurks on the road doesn’t wish to let them go so easily and simply pulls the vehicle back. Once it becomes clear that escape isn’t an option, the trio try to make sense of their situation. Since none of them have directly glimpsed at any threat and only have the sounds and reactions of their friends to go off of, they conclude Olivia must be playing a trick on them. Yet, it soon becomes clear that the same isn’t true after Olivia wakes in a haze and finds herself walking out of the RV and toward the smoke cloud.
Olivia seems to have been lured out by some menacing force who contacted her through her phone—likely pretending to be Michael. Eventually, comes out from under the spell and tries to fight for her life. However, as she bangs on the RV door, begging her friends to let her in, the force tricks Carrie and the others by showing them a vision of Olivia outside in front of the vehicle. For the same reason, the girl succumbs to her death outside the RV door, falling victim to an invisible antagonist.
The same remains true for the rest of the group’s horrifying misadventure. Unseen forces surround the RV with blood-curdling screams before they begin banging on every surface. In a moment of respite, Gaby makes a run for it—despite her bad leg—to bring back help and never returns. Even after Chris wakes from his drugged-out haze and attempts to fix the RV, he dies at the hands of a hidden driver and his killer car. Carrie and Sarah—the last ones standing—attempt to parse out an explanation for the occult items they find within the RV, which belong to Michael’s elusive uncle. Nonetheless, they continuously come short.
Until the end, it seems there’s no explanation for the horrors outside the RV. Yet, one thing is clear—the one visible danger looming over Carrie and her friends comes from their own paranoia. Despite being longtime best friends, none of these people actually sport close connections. While Carrie and Sarah are most upfront about it, the same remains apparent in everyone’s easy willingness to distrust one another. For the same reason, the brewing paranoia inside of them becomes complacent in numerous tragedies, including Olviia’s death and Carrie’s stab wound. As such, it remains clear that the supernatural entity haunting the road prefers to toy with its victims through tricks and manipulations to feed their paranoia before striking them down in one swift stroke.
Do Carrie and Her Friend Survive?
As soon as the horrors begin plaguing the road trip Carrie and her friends are on, it becomes established that whatever entity is after them only operates outside the RV. Therefore, every individual who dies succumbs to their death outside of the vehicle safety, making it feel like a haven of some sort. Nonetheless, this changes once Carrie and Sarah are the last ones left aboard the vehicle. Although the entity has been messing with the inside of the RV through flickering lights, sliding windows, and malfunctioning technology, it never directly manifests inside. However, as the night bleeds into the morning with Carrie barely holding onto life through her stab wound, the entity begins laying its mind games with the inhabitants of the RV.
As such, Carrie undergoes a hallucination that makes her believe Sarah is a demonic entity. This leads to some tension between the pair, which is only increased once the tell-tale smoke of danger ignites within the RV. Carrie realizes it’s the same smoke they lost Michael, Jason, and then Olivia to. Thus, she reasons that they must take their lives into their own hands and make a run for it. However, by then, Sarah had spied on a tattoo that looked like a pentagram on the back of her friend’s neck. Consequently, she grows suspicious that Carrie is involved in the occult, much like Michael’s uncle. The same compels her to believe the other woman has to be behind the strange happenings.
Although it offers a neat explanation, this, too, is another trick the entity is playing on the two girls to fester paranoia and distrust between them. In the end, Carrie tries to get Sarah and herself out of the RV, but the latter ends up trapped within. As a result, Carries becomes the “final girl” and bolts away from the vehicle to save her life. She thinks she can be safe from the road’s horrors once she makes her way to the interstate. Therefore, she’s all too glad once she makes it to the edge of the busy highway.
Yet, an invisible force pulls Carrie away before she can step out onto the road and try to hitch a ride. While the road seemed to have been instrumental to the entity’s powers, it seems they have some bandwidth to hunt their prey down. The same remains clear through Gaby’s dismembered leg that Carrie comes across in the woods while fleeing. As it would turn out, the road’s entity had chosen Carrie and her friends as their victims to be hunted down until the end.
Who Does the Abandoned Car Belongs to?
While the film undoubtedly leaves many questions unanswered and many more ambiguous, one detail in particular manages to stick around until the end. When Carrie and her friends are driving down the road, which would end up spelling out their doom, the woman notices a car abandoned by the roadside. The car is too nice, and the journey is too long to have simply been left behind by the owners. Nonetheless, as Carrie and her friends remain the only ones on the road, it becomes clear that the car’s owners are long gone. Once the supernatural horrors begin unfolding around Carrie and the others, the fate of the car’s owners becomes clearer.
It’s likely that the car’s owners also ended up taking the same route and fell victim to the entity that lives within. Under the assumption that it’s the road itself that is haunted, we can conclude that the area is an urban legend of some kind. Perhaps the patrons at the Roadhouse are so hostile because of the same. They know travelers like Michael and Carrie are prone to becoming the entity’s prey. Alternatively, it’s also possible they’re actively trying to send people down the road with their hostility to appease the entity. Thus, it’s likely that the owners of the abandoned car were previous victims of the entity. As the film ends, the RV takes up the car’s spot—abandoned by the roadside as a warning to others if they’re willing to see it. Ultimately, as another car full of college students drives down the road, ignoring the RV’s warning sign, it becomes clear that many more will inevitably fall victim to the road and its inexplicable horrors.
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