The Lantern Rankings

Here we have the first 4 lantern holds I have come across. You can see here in F Tier both the origin of my lantern connoisseur-ship, Annie Knowby in Evil Dead 2 (1987) and her horrible lantern hold be mimicked by Elise in Insidious Chapter 3 (2015). While Elise does have a good lantern grip in Chapter 2, it is never properly shown so it is not being ranked this hold is the least effective hold, as the lantern is so high that is wont be illuminating the ground, and is so close to the face it is more likely to blind the user than be a helpful personal lighting device (P.L.D.).

In E Tier we have Josh from Insidious Chapter 2 (2013), and you can see he has a slightly more efficient hold, extending his arm outward and actually projecting light ahead of him. However, he suffers from the same problem with the height of the lantern, not properly lighting the actual ground ahead of him. I am slightly sympathetic in this case as the lantern can also be used as a weapon against the spirits in The Further, so keeping it at their head height could be helpful.

Finally in B Tier we have Alice Hardy from Friday the 13th (1980), the Final Girl of the movie and rightfully so. She has the best lantern grip I have seen so far, however still has room for improvement. We see she holds the lantern at about waist height, which in my opinion is just a little below the best height. We also see she holds it outwards, but again not far enough to be a really good lantern hold. Alice has a lantern hold that is decently effective, and doesn't blind herself and as such is planted firmly in B Tier.

We have a double lantern grip being added to the E Tier from Insidious: The Last Key (2018). Both Elise and her mother hold this lantern ahead, and while from Elise's perspective this is just as bad, if not worse than the original inciting incident by Annie Knowby, I let it off with an E as it has two people's grips to conform to, and as such would be more difficult than the standard one had grip.