Whilst, on the whole, I did enjoy Red Lights, there were moments where things just appeared to completely unravel – which I found quite worrying. The beginning was fantastic, but about halfway through it seemed to lose its way (majorly, and those who’ve seen it will know the ‘event’ that I’m talking about here!), becoming a little too much on the chaotic side for my taste. Luckily, it did pick up again towards the end, but was this enough?
It starred Sigourney Weaver (from the Alien franchise, need I say more?), Cillian Murphy (most famous for his role in the British zombie film 28 Days Later, as well as Wes Craven’s Red Eye), Robert De Niro (who has been in such a vast list of films that if you aren’t aware who he is yet, then head straight back to the video store for education!) and Elizabeth Olsen (from the remake of The Silent House). A fantastic cast, in my opinion, although I must confess that I was a little surprised that Robert De Niro wasn’t given a bigger role (and Elizabeth Olsen could have done with a bigger role too, as I felt she ended up being not all that relevant a character). I think that they universally did well in their roles, with great dialogue all round – though the back story to Cillian Murphy’s character, Buckley, was a little confused and cryptic.
The Spanish director, Rodrigo Cortes, also did Buried featuring Ryan Reynolds a few years earlier, and I am very pleased with the fact that he did an extensive amount of research before making Red Lights in order to get his facts straight. I thought the film was a really interesting one, featuring a concept which I had not seen explored in that way before – the psychics versus the parapsychologists!
I, myself, am in no way inclined to beliefs in the ‘supernatural’, and I feel that this is actually the ‘popular’ opinion among today’s society – yet in this film, it appeared that everyone in the world, apart from a two pitiful scientists, were ready and willing to accept that telekinesis (and other ‘psychic’ phenomena) was an undisputed part of our ‘reality’. Even some of the parapsychologists spent a large amount of time bumbling around like idiots and getting fooled by the most basic of ’fraud’ techniques (the one that springs to my mind is where one ‘psychic’ looked at the reflection in the scientists glasses to guess the right cards…I mean, how thick could you get?). Also, I find it amusing how in this world, a psychic trying to prove his powers has made headline news, when in actual fact it is rather a ‘niche’ market – meaning that unless you look for these sort of events and information of that nature, it’s nowhere to be found. These are just minor criticisms though, and do not really affect my opinion of the film as a whole, because ultimately, it was these methods which made the whole movie feel more ‘epic’ and ‘spectacular’ than it would have been had it just been set in our boring, mundane and close-minded world.
I won’t give away any of the twists and turns along the way, as we are taken on a journey of the sceptic, trying to disprove all supernatural events that we witness. Even I couldn’t really tell where the film was eventually going to be headed, although I could tell that something sketchy was going on, at least! This is all part of the fun, and I guarantee that you haven’t seen a film quite like Red Lights before. Though the final ‘twist’ does not at all hit the mark for some people, I personally thought that it was quite an ingenious route to go down –especially considering that the film had been somewhat anti-psychic the whole way through. I think it is definitely one that is worth the watch, believer in the supernatural or not.
