Review: Red Lights (2012)
Directed by Rodrigo Cortés; screenplay by Rodrigo Cortés; starring Cillian Murphy, Sigourney Weaver and Robert De Niro.
So I realise I had a slightly out of nowhere jab at Christopher Nolan's films yesterday whilst reviewing Shirley but here it feels slightly more reasonable. Red Lights really is Rodrigo Cortes doing his noughties Nolan thriller impression. Red Lights has all the trademarks, the slightly ugly desaturated colour palette, the casting, the subject matter, it just all lines up and... I'm now realising this probably isn't a very original or interesting observation. Point is, it's sort of the worst bits of Nolan, the pretension, the painfully expository dialogue, being done with no original ideas.
Anyway, the film follows Margaret (Sigourney Weaver) and Tom (Cillian Murphy) who are two academic skeptics focussing on debunking all sorts of claims of the paranormal. Margaret is the stoic veteran with a tragic backstory revealed to us only when the drama requires it and Tom is the Prodigy who's been following her as a kind of assistant for some time now - ready to take the reins from her but unclear as to the risks involved. This duo hop from case to case via a recurring university class they teach featuring two bright students, Sally (Elizabeth Olsen) and Ben (Craig Roberts), until tensions arise between Margaret and Tom as to whether they should investigate the resurfaced veteran psychic, Simon Silver (Robert De Niro.)
The film approaches questions of faith, illusion and skepticism but doesn't really make anything of the topic, other than the predictable: "well what can we really know?"
Interesting ideas are set up to be explored but then scrapped before anything can be said and the movie attempts to cover this up by racing from plot point to plot point. Each only serving to increase the frustration experienced, in the worst way. The first twist is predictable from the first moment De Niro randomly takes his sunglasses of to show no one in particular that he's blind before putting them back on. The second is... Well it's pretty much as contrived as it is pointless. Each question it answers just raises ten more in its place.
It's disappointing because the premise is interesting, but as you progress you realise there's really not much going on beneath the surface than someone saying, oh this is neat have to seen this before? Over and over: hey look this is how this is faked, and this is how this is done. I also just don't get how they have a class dedicated to this - at one point Weaver hands Murphy a photo and just tells him he'll be fine to teach the class because the photo's cool. What's the point? Just, please, what's the point?
Anyway if you want films with similar premises that are just better, I'd recommend, of course The Prestige - even though I'm weirdly obsessed with slagging off Nolan right now apparently - The Last Exorcism and hell even something like The Exorcism of Emily Rose. If you want more of the aesthetics of Cillian Murphy's cheekbones go Sunshine for a decent meditation on faith versus disbelief.
Watched on 16 April 2021