On paper I don't know if it could get much
better than this pseudo, psycho, supernatural thriller 'Red
Lights'. The cast is an outstanding one featuring a trio
of gifted veterans in Toby Jones, Sigourney Weaver and Robert
DeNiro… who actually gives effort in this one… International
movie star Cillian Murphy is your lead and Elizabeth Olsen,
the talented Olsen child, is our ingénue starlet and the
director is hot Spanish director Rodrigo Cortes, who is hot
partially because he had just made the extremely effective
claustrophobic thriller 'Buried' and partly because he's a
Spanish film director and everybody loves Spanish film
directors right now. What could've possibly gone
wrong? I have no proof of this, but I bet Rodrigo would
tell me 'studio meddling'. I betcha!
Psychologist Dr. Margaret Matheson (Weaver) and her colleague
physicist Dr. Tom Buckley have one purpose in life at this
time, that being the debunking of paranormal phenomena, in
particular those who claim to have paranormal gifts. If
you say you can talk to the dead, channel the ghosts of Da
Vinci or Liberace and you're charging people for these gifts
of yours? Then you'd damn better be able to really do
this because Matheson and Buckley know all the tricks and they
will bust you up. Margaret is curious why her colleague,
who could do just about anything at any university for any
amount of money is hanging out with her and her floundering,
underdeveloped department, but Tom has his reasons.
Margaret is pretty good at what she does but where Ahab had
Moby Dick, Margaret has Simon Silver (De Niro), a blind
psychic type who made a name for himself back in the 70's,
with Margaret desperate to prove he's a fraud, until one of
his other detractors verbally attacked him on television and
then suddenly died of a heart attack, one that Silver is
rumored to have psychically caused. After that incident
Silver dropped out of circulation… until today.
Silver coming back to the public eye is a
pretty big deal, these being rough times and folks needing to
believe in something. Plus Silver and his amazing gifts
can do more than bend spoons and misdirect faucet water, he
can heal the sick with his hands alone. Tom is desperate
to prove this guy to be the fraud he knows he is, but Margaret
wants nothing to do with him. Silver may or may not be a
psychic, but what he is, as far as Margaret is concerned, is
dangerous and bad things happen to people who mess with Simon
Silver.
Does Tom listen to Margaret? No he does not.
Should he have? Judging by the bad and unexplainable
things that are happening to Tom and his girlfriend grad
assistant Sally (Olsen), he probably should have. Is
Silver causing this to happen? I guess. It's still
a mystery. Silver even submits to a rigorous series of
tests, administered by colleague Dr. Shackelton (Jones) who
really wants to believe that psychic phenomena is real and the
tests look to confirm that Silver just might be the real
deal. But Tom ABSOLUTELY refuses to believe. Is
Silver the real deal? The answer is that this movie, at
this point, proceed to get in its own way and it's not a good
thing.
For a while at least, I enjoyed the time I was spending with
Rodrigo Cortez's 'Red Lights'. When you watch as many
low budget, horrific, SyFy type original movies that we watch
here at the FCU, when you get the chance to watch something as
well acted and as well thought out and as expertly crafted as
'Red Lights' was, and believe me, despite my ultimate
disappointment in this movie, it is a nice movie to look
at.
The storyline, which was relatively original, or at least
about as original and a story can be nowadays, had me going
for a while with a genuine mystery as to whether Simon Silver
is authentic or a fraud, and considering some of the things
that were happening, the audience was cornered into thinking
the solution had to be one and not the other. Admittedly
the story being told to us wasn't all that clear most of the
time and we knew because of the erratic nature in the way
information was being dispensed that we were in for some kind
of a twist style ending. It's unavoidable. The
hope is the twist doesn't ruin the movie. Oh
damn. It does.
I do have to say this twist didn't come completely out of left
field in the sense that it makes absolutely no sense at all in
relation to the movie, but it did come out of short
center. But more tragically it calls into question an
awful lot of things that had happened beforehand which now
can't possibly be explained, and a lot that stuff were the
cool parts. That makes me sad.
It's been a while since a movie has raised me up and then
dropped me down to crash the way 'Red Lights' did. I'm
telling you, 'studio meddling'. I betcha!
