Lights Out: Moody, Self-Aware Scares

"If Mommy's crazy, does that mean we're crazy too?"
-Martin, Lights Out
***Some spoilers, but none for anything beyond the movie's prologue.***

In order to properly set the mood for this movie review, I'm going to first share the two-and-a-half-minute short from which it originated. 

Sufficiently scared yet, my dear Pinecones? Let us press on.

What you see in the short film above translates quite smoothly into the opening sequence of the feature-length version now hitting theaters, but with a...