2012's "Red Lights", directed by Rodrigo Cortes and starring Sigourney Weaver, Robert De Niro, and Cillian Murphy, begins with an extremely high-suspense séance scene. Weaver and Murphy are working together to attempt to prove the medium and the paranormal activity is fraudulent- an interesting twist to watch them use the same equipment and techniques as other paranormal "researchers" we've seen in other films who are trying to find positive evidence. The scene quickly shows the deep professional connection and expertise of the two scientists, who despite frightening bangs and an enthusiastic hairdresser-turned-medium, easily expose the young daughter as the culprit and the hairdresser's tricks. It's engaging to watch them work well together, and even begin to probe deeper into the mismatched pair's pasts as reasons for their intense desire to disprove the existence of real paranormal activity.
However with the sudden reappearance of the only person to ever give Sigourney Weaver's character cause to doubt herself and her beliefs, De Niro's blind psychic Silver, the story totally goes off track. I get the idea of having Weaver, the master scientist, confront her old enemy and fail, causing the apprentice (Murphy) to have to pick up where she left off and prove Silver a fraud. The execution of this, unfortunately, is awkward at best. Murphy's personal and professional judgment become increasingly derailed, and we don't get any further insight into his meltdown or how he figures out Silver's weaknesses. By the later half of the film I had completely lost interest, and even when I tried to refocus my attention to figure out how he was going to catch Silver, it was too confusing for me to pick it back up.
The good: Most performances are believable and expert (although I kept waiting for Cillian Murphy to go stalking someone in his scarecrow mask...), the beginning séance is a great twist on the paranormal phenomena idea, and the student/teacher dynamic moves the plot along through the first half.
The bad: confusing second half, De Niro's somewhat bumbling performance (I wasn't convinced Silver was smarter than the scientists or menacing at all), weird unexplored romance between Murphy's character and one of Weaver's students, unfocused and unappealing second half as Murphy's character slowly descends into an impotent, whiny, nut job.
ummm no. It was bad enough when the main character died but that "he was the psychic all along" twist was stupid.
A good opening and an excellent cast get completely wasted on a fairly dumb and messy closing half.
Everything was going great until the last few minutes of the movie
I really enjoyed this, it had the right amount of strange and suspenseful without getting too boring and pretentious.
OMG. It's a "Sixth Sense" ending? Really?
This has destroyed the whole movie.
Ha? What did happens in the ending? I don't get it.
Review by r96skBlockedParent2020-09-04T01:04:51Z
Honestly, I don't even truly know what I just watched. Did I, however, absolutely thoroughly and undeniably enjoy it? You betcha! That's probably thanks to the outstanding cast, rather than anything else.
Cillian Murphy is utterly superb in this, I loved his performance as Tom. It's no surprise given what else he has done, he's a great actor to watch. Murphy isn't alone in 'Red Lights' though, as he is joined by other notable performers. Sigourney Weaver (Margaret) and Robert De Niro (Simon) are also terrific, they add a lot with what they give. You also have Elizabeth Olsen (Holly) and Toby Jones (Paul) involved too. Top casting!
On the other hand, the premise - or at least how it's shown - isn't as great as it could've been. I still enjoyed it wholly, but that's probably because the film makes a lot of noise around the story and builds up the tension well. However, when you break it down after watching it isn't anything as outrageous as you might feel at the time - at least that's how I view it. Some more development into the characters would've been nice, for example.
Nevertheless, the film done its job and made me feel entertained and enthralled into what was happening. It's difficult to criticise it due to that, to be honest. I'll leave it to others to dive deeper into it, but all I can say is I practically loved it.