Red Lights (2012) - Review

Rodrigo Cortes, director of Buried, delivers a brave psychological thriller that hits some great targets but misses a whole lot more

Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy) and Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) are paranormal investigators and university professors who spend their spare time disproving paranormal phenomenons, psychics and mediums. While we are initially presented with these characters, we are also presented with Simon Silver (Robert De Niro), a legendary medium who is making his first professional appearance in thirty years, having retired shortly after the allegedly natural and sudden death by heart attack of one of his most ardent detractors.

Not surprisingly, the film follows the events depicting what happens when the sceptics and the psychics clash. While the first quarter of the film introduces us to the methods by which fraudulent psychics use to trick people, the rest of the film provides us with the escalating tension that a thriller should. Albeit Cortes having only released one major film (2010s Buried), his directorial skills are exceedingly impressive, especially with regards to his genre of choice. His attention to detail makes the increasingly suspect events of Red Lights all the more unnerving, as predictably unexplainable phenomenon begin to occur during the pursuit of Silver, such as birds committing suicide by window and electrical appliances unexpectedly blowing up.

This is all fine and well for a little while, but as the second act begins and the frequency of unexplainable events increases dramatically, everything starts to seem strangely unrelated. There are sections of the film, that make absolutely no sense, even when considering the films themes and topics of choice. The ending is intended to provide an explanation to these events, and while I won't spoil it, I will mention that it has sharply polarised many people. The message it puts across seems extraordinarily unrelated to the rest of the film, and it finishes with an uncomfortable absence of closure, even though there may be appear to be some on the surface

For the most part the performances are all of a high quality. Cillian Murphy's portrayal of the seemingly cynical physicist does falter at times, although this can be marked down to an occasionally weak script. However, this is similarly saved by Sigourney Weaver's performance as the equally cynical scientific debunker, as well as Robert De Niro's effortless depiction of the visually impaired Simon Silver. The cast is awash with talent and they do an excellent job of upholding the films often choppy rhythm.

Red Lights reminded to no end of David Fincher's Se7en, in that it's set in this bleak and gloomy city where the rain never stops falling.  Strangely enough, Red Lights could also be compared to Ghostbusters in it's portrayal of parapsychology; in the comedy world, the investigators lose their funding, but in the apparently serious world of Red Lights, they have no shortage of it. The ending works in context of this, because Red Lights isn't set in the real world. It's meant to be taken as seriously as Ghostbusters is, and that's the only thing the two have in common. Well, that and Sigourney Weaver.

3/5