Aylmer to Zazzoo and Beyond: Red Lights

Red Lights

113 min - Drama | Horror | Thriller

Rated: R

Director: Rodrigo Cortés

Writer: Rodrigo Cortés (screenplay)

Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Robert De Niro and Cillian Murphy | See full cast and crew

Grade: C+

Psychologist Margaret Matheson and her assistant Tom Buckley study paranormal activity for the purpose of debunking and exposing the frauds and hucksters, leading them to investigate world-renowned psychic Simon Silver who has resurfaced years after his toughest critic mysteriously passed away.

Red Lights is a 2012 Spanish-American thriller film written and directed by Rodrigo Cortés

Rodrigo Cortes’ last film ‘Buried’ starring Ryan Reynolds, which admittedly I have not seen, is apparently a masterclass in suspense building and claustrophobic tension. There is perhaps a good reason I haven't seen it, considering that the whole film takes place in a coffin-sized wooden box buried beneath the Iraqi desert. (It may have been more difficult to rein in the terror rather than manufacture it, even so) As a child I developed a phobia about being buried alive after seeing some E. A. Poe (or somebody's) movie where a catatonic epileptic was buried with a glass window in the coffin and when the coffin was bumped as it hit the bottom of the grave the victims eyes were jolted open, he lay there paralized, unable to scream as the tossed shovels of dirt were tossed in the grave slowly blotting out the light...yeah, that may be why I haven't seen it. Anyway, hopes were high for Red Lights. Cortes has been lauded as a talented, new up and coming director (he also penned the screenplay), his film boasts a very gifted cast focused upon an interesting subject.

Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy) are University lecturers with the goal of debunking paranormal activity. Their day-to-day prey consists of mediums channeling voices from the beyond and lifting tables with their feet, but they occasionally take on larger fish and it is after exposing one such celebrity spiritualist as a fraud that things get begin to get interesting.

The blind Celeb Psychic, Simon Silver (Robert DeNiro), Greatest Spiritual Healer Of All Time, announces his 'un-retierment' returning to theaters to amaze all and heal the sick. Buckley sets about convincing his partner Matheson to investigate Silver. Matheson who has tangled with Silver earlier and refuses to cooperate.

The very confident Matheson doesn’t seem the type to be flustered by the fact that years ago, for a single second, Silver ‘made her doubt’. Here too, is where I start to doubt the script. Surely his mafia like security entourage and surly agent are far more scary. While Buckley is investigating Silver on his own at one of his shows and all of his electrical equipment blows up! Returning to the lab he discovers that Matheson seemingly has been remotely killed. Fuelled by the grief of losing his partner, Buckley resolves to expose Silver if it’s the last thing he ever does.

Cillian Murphy gives a solid and if increasingly frantic performance as his investigations lead him down dark alleyways and progressively stranger dead ends. Odd things begin to happen, his apartment is ransacked, he has an unsettling encounter with an extremely rude tramp and crows fly like kamikazes at his head. At this point the audience is guessing which way this movie is going to swing, but there are two key events still to get through.

Matheson and Buckley’s department at the University is under-funded, while the department for research into extra-sensory-perception receives more money than they can spend. They test subjects with cards that have shapes on them, sound-proof telepathy booths and experimentation with ‘thoughtography’. This rival department, led by the well-meaning but ultimately methodologically careless Paul Shackleton (Toby Jones), is allowed to scientifically evaluate Simon Silver’s ‘powers’ once and for all in a controlled environment. Of course, Buckley wants in on the action and almost beats his panel inclusion out of the reluctant Shackleton.

The tests are meticulous and Silver’s performances are almost flawless.For the incredulous Buckley it is now a race against time to find out how his tricks are done, or else they will be published in a scientific journal causing every skeptic across the world to die a lot inside. Buckley enlists the help of his protégés Ben (Brit, Craig Roberts, with a doubious American accent) and Sally (Elizabeth Olsen, also Buckley’s love-interest in a totally pointless sub-plot thrown into the with careless abandon for absolutely no good reason).

At this point the movie starts to play out its hand. Will we be insulted by one of those non-endings where you never find out what happened (and the Film Festival Elites declare you’re just a backwater southern Bubba if you don’t think it’s genius). While Buckley heads for the final showdown with Silver he leaves Ben and Sally scouring Closed Circuit TV footage of Silver’s experiments to try and discover the secret of his deception. (Here Ben delivers one of the best lines in the entire movie.) Sally asks Ben if he can ‘sharpen the image’. Ben sarcastically points out that ‘this isn’t the movies, it’s just a CCTV film being played on a standard computer’. Yes, in fact this is a movie, on that lives unabashedly in the real world, where nonsense is exposed and logic and reason are celebrated! And their subsequent discovery not only that Silver had cheated on the experiments, but that – drum roll please - he is not even blind !!!

Meanwhile, Buckley has arrived at the theater where Silver is performing his last show ever (yes, he is re-retiring) and is ready to confront the great illusionist. Just before the showdown he stops in the restroom and gets the b'geebers kicked out of him by one of Silver’s henchmen in a surprisingly brutal toilet scene featuring some very brittle ceramic lavatory ware. The battered and bloodied Buckley stumbles into the auditorium to begin the showdown we’re all waiting for. Right off he tells an audience member – arm fixed in the air by one of Silver’s ‘charms’ – to put his hand down as there is nothing stopping him. The man, to his surprise, does so (drum roll), another victory for reason.

Buckley, at this time is unaware of Ben and Sally’s findings, so you're thinking he is going to speak to the audience and simply give a beautifully stated, impassioned defense for ‘thinking about what you are doing, questioning what you are told and scrutinize what you believe for the sake of the pursuit of truth through reason, through testable means rather than believing a fantasy through fear of reality, or some such answer – any answer – for fear of having no answer’. To refute Silver’s scientific ‘triumphs’ would be a great big smug cherry on the top of the scientific realist cake.

Spoiler Alert

If you don't want to know the end of the film stop reading this instant. I mean it, stop. Right now!

What Buckley actually comes out with, however, leaves you literally shaking your head in your hands. You see, it turns out that Buckley, Murphy’s lecturer and long term partner, is in fact himself a ‘paranormal’. An obligatory inane montage of all of the film’s strange happenings narrated by Buckley revealing the final twist like an M. Night Shyamalan character attempting to tie up all the loose ends and all of a sudden the believers in spirituality and paranormal events are saved from the brink. Huge sighs of relief, eh?

Buckley’s finally exposes Silver with one of his last acts in the movie, he throws a coin to Silver who catches it – exposing to all in the audience that he actually isn’t blind. (Now, this is so ridiculous for two reasons – first: with all his years and years of pretending to be blind under his belt, you’d think that Simon Silver would know to not catch the coin to maintain the ruse, and second: even if he did choose to catch the coin, this is a man who has just performed surgery with his bare hands and levitated 10 feet into the air on stage – you’d think that he could explain that despite his blindness he was able to catch the coin due to some kind of ESP! AARGH, I hate stupidity in movies!) The audience gasps in shock at this BIG REVEAL, Murphy adding the final nail in the coffin, calls out “Phony”. Incidentally, that's pretty much what I was thinking as I watched the credits roll.

This was sort of a hard one to grade. Mostly, the movie is pretty good; the suspense builds; the plot thickens; and you keep guessing really right up until the last scene. The last scene, though, is just so insipid. Murphy and Weaver are both good the chemistry between them as a duo is believable. DeNiro, prone to hamming up such roles, is convincing casts a dark charismatic presence, especially notable in that he doesn’t actually spend that much time on screen, of course that all helps to build the cloud of mystery surrounding him. Cortes has written and directed for the most part an excellent film. Unfortunately, the stupid ending tarnishes all of it. If you were to doodle on a Michelangelo painting its value would destroyed, and the stinker ending to Red Lights is a little like Sharpie mustache on the Mona Lisa.

Cast:
Cillian Murhpy Sigourney Weaver Robert DeNiro Elizabeth Olsen
Tom Buckley Margaret Matheson Simon Silver Sally Owen