Light and darkness have been a fundamental plot and narrative resource for numerous filmmakers
Electricity is fundamental in cinema. In fact, without it the seventh art or would exist, because an image on the screen would never have been screened. Light (and darkness, therefore) is, in turn, one of the great artistic resources of filmmakers. Depending on its tone, the story will be told and perceived in one way or another. But, in addition, electricity and blackouts have been a recurring plot reason in the most disparate films of cinema. So much that even in the animation film MONSTROS SA Its protagonists worked to scare laughed, as electricity was obtained from the screams of the children. After all, running out of light is a deep fear in modern society.
Sometimes the blackouts are a symbol of dystopia; others, a perfect plan of an evil spy in a thriller of action, and there are not few occasions in which the lack of light is also used as an excuse to produce terror in the audience. There are famous real blackouts that have even inspired several films. Recently several series such as Blackout o Zero day They have seemed to anticipate with a good eye what would happen if one was extended like the one that was lived on Monday in Spain, but the cinema has been giving lessons about the consequences of a blackout. Next, we review a collection of very different movies so that the next one does not catch us by surprise.
‘Broad in New York’ (1978), by Eddy Matalon
For mental disconnection.
In 1977, New York suffered a famous blackout. The city that never sleeps ran out of light at a time when the rot flooded its streets. In full era of catastrophe cinema (a few years after The colossus in flames), This Canadian series B with James Mitchum and Robert Carradine focuses the event on a city building where robberies, violations and police lack of control are produced. The real city was razed by looting and fires. If we want to disconnect, You can recover on Amazon Prime Video.
‘Summer of Sam’ (Nadie is safe from Sam) (1999), by Spike Lee
By social and historical value.
Much more realistic, social and deep was Spike’s gaze to that chaotic summer of the New York in which he grew up. The director himself puts himself in the skin of a reporter covering the blackout of that horror night that lasted 25 hours in a film that encapsulates, in addition to an entire era for the city with racial crises, heat waves and economic impoverishment, the beginning of fanaticism by serial killers. Lee is a teacher of social chiaroscuros. The blackout, by the way, is also the center of the film 77 Blackoutby Cary Joji Fukunaga, with Tom Hardy as a corrupt police.
‘Leave the world behind’ (2023), by Sam Esmail
To face the digital blackout.
Trailer of ‘Leaving the World behind’
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In Mr. RobotSam Esmail has already contemplated the perversions of our extreme connectivity, and in this film produced by former president Barack Obama again contemplate that disconnection in a very current account of distrust between families and broken human connections. In 2025, the really relevant blackout is digital. The same as that of the cybellectronic attack that made films such as Matrix or created a whole plot of action and espionage in The Jungle 4.0 y Skyfall. This film with Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali and Ethan Hawke is more present than dystopia, and is One of the great successes in Netflix’s history.
‘Coherence’ (2013), de James Ward Byrkit
Because a blackout is the excuse for much more.
This cult film of parallel realities and very little budget begins with a group of friends whose quiet meeting breaks when the light goes. So, this darkness not only becomes a science fiction argument, but it serves to question the darkest side of each seemingly normal character. Filmin has this film of turns and surprising arguments.
‘We have Patria’ (2023), by Mikel Garrido / ‘La Guilt, probably’ (2016), by Michael Labarca
In case we want to live recent real blackheads.
Venezuela is the epicenter of these two shorts that tell different stories in the blackouts that Venezuela lived, an argument that will surely continue to take advantage in the cinematography of the Latin American country. In fact, the Marialejandra Martín director already prepares Zuass, the light left!on the electrical crisis of 2019.
‘The road’ (2009), by John Hillcoat
Because there is no illuminated apocalypse.
The apocalyptic and dystopia cinema starts many times with a great blackout: Mad Max, eleven station, The dawn of the planet of the apesI am a legend, the end of everythingthe series Revolution… And one of the ones that best played with that light and dark was this road movie Based on Cormac McCarthy’s book by Caníbales, Esperanza and family. There was no attack here, the planet simply said I could not. Raw, gray and cold, It is available in Filmin and Amazon Prime Video.
‘Alone in the dark’ (1967), by Terence Young
Because Audrey Hepburn shines even in the dark.
The gloom is fundamental in this thriller With Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman who uses the darkness of the house to give her lesson to a group of thieves. So important was that effect that in its exhibition in Salas it was announced that during the eight minutes of its climatic scene, the room would darken to the legal limits to multiply the terrifying effect. Dark photography is a film technique that changes over time, and today we are already much more accustomed to images in total gloom.
‘The dark gentleman. The LEGENDA RENACE ‘(2012), by Christopher Nolan
To enter a darker Gotham.
Nolan is a filmmaker obsessed with electricity. How it made clear in The final trickwith a David Bowie like a Tesla haunter. So for the end of his Batman trilogy he took one of Frank Miller’s comics arguments and Gotham turned into an even more chaotic and dark city. Chaos and pillage on the screen is directed by Bane, and can be recovered In Max, Movistar Plus+, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
‘The Trigger Effect’ (the domino effect) (1996), by David Koepp
To understand that today we live a blackout.
The screenwriter of Jurassic Park He is responsible for this film that turns a blackout into a personal drama with a trio in the center. A thriller Novel who has been outdated today in his proposal and aesthetics.
‘In El Bosque’ (2015), by Patricia Roema
So darkness does our inner world.
This is at its base a human drama focused on two sisters (Evan Rachel Wood and Elliot Page). The difference is that they live away in a country house in North Carolina after the world has suffered a great blackout and now everyone fights for gas and electricity. Both have decided to depart from the world, without information, only with rumors and people who wore the forests around them.
‘No breathing’ (2016), by Fede Álvarez
To face the terrors of the gloom.
Horror knows how to play perfectly with darkness (Is there anything more terrifying than the gloom? Maybe be without mobile?), And this tense story of some young people locked in the house of a fearsome blind man takes her to another level. When this killer turns off all the lights in his basement, one of the most tense scenes of the genre is created. And shot in full darkness. It can be seen in Movistar Plus+.
‘BlackoUT’ (2013), of Ben Chanan
Because it is more real than reality.
This horror movie remembers in its presentation to Blair’s witch’s project. Presented as a documentary, and with images of real blackouts, this experiment explores the effects of a cyber attack that leaves the United Kingdom without energy. It is fiction, but not for much. Your title, Blackoutis the same as you have given for several low -budget films on blackouts: the Russian science fiction of The Blackout (2019), the drama The blackout (2019) o Blackout (2008), where a group of people is locked in an elevator in full light. Darkness never ceases to be a great argument for cinema.
‘The purge’ (2013), by James DeMonaco
To convince us that the world can be different.
Reading many comments about the real blackout on Monday, many might think that Spain was going to end up being a place of chaos and looting like the New York of 1977. Nothing is further from reality. We leave that worst aspect of the human being for this series of films in which everything is allowed in the darkness of a city. It is available at Movistar Plus+ and Skyshowtime.
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About the firm
Years have spent fires in the Social Network Team of El País and now he is dedicated to talking about cinema, series, comics and what is put through him from the Culture Section. He doesn’t know how to ride a bicycle.
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