filmthug movies, reviews & rants: Red Lights

Red Lights

It’s a shame people are already referring to Red Lights as this year’s The Sixth Sense. It’s a quietly better film than M. Night Shameless’ over-rated opus but the comparison may mean you’ll spend much of the movie trying to guess its twist rather than just sitting back and enjoying the cinematic sleight of hand. In case you’re wondering, the twist isn’t that Robert De Niro has remembered how to give a subtle, nuanced performance.

Veteran paranormal researchers and sceptics Dr Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and Dr Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy) spend their days investigating fraudulent mediums, faith healers and fake hauntings. Sort of like a less odious James Randi. Or Derren Brown without the showmanship. Or the smugness.

They’re professional ghostbusters, debunking the stage psychics and charlatans that fleece gullible audiences, preying on the grief of the bereaved and the vulnerable. They search for what Matheson dubs ‘red lights,’ exposing the subtle, tell-tale signs and tricks con-men use to hoodwink their victims. In 30 years she’s never come across a case she couldn’t explain. Except, maybe, one.

When the blind and celebrated psychic Simon Silver (Robert De Niro) returns to the stage after a decades of self-imposed retirement following the mysterious death of his biggest critic, Buckley ignores his mentor’s warnings that Silver is dangerous and should be left alone. With the aid of amorous student Sally (Elizabeth Olsen), Buckley sets out to discover the truth about Silver, risking his sanity and his life as his investigation slides deeper into obsession.

Building on the success of his 2010 English-language debut Buried, Red Lights’ director Rodrigo Cortés constructs a film that’s founded on more than just our desire to see Ryan Reynolds suffer; Red Lights instead indulges our desire to see Cillian Murphy suffer. Two thirds of a really good film, Red Lights is a classy, fairground ride, Cortés building tension, drip feeding scares as he withholds information, deploying a Hitchcockian trick box of sudden shocks and creeping dread. Every door creaks ominously, every phone call startles the crap out of you. Suicidal sparrows bash their brains out every time Murphy passes a window, electrical equipment explodes, light bulbs shatter, masonry crumbles. The closer Murphy gets to the truth, the deeper the mystery becomes, the less sure his, and the audience’s, grip on reality.

Cementing his leading man status and carrying the film, Murphy brings a vulnerable ambiguity to his role that suggests Buckley may just be losing his mind. A sceptic who desperately wants to believe, to be proved wrong. Weaver, as ever, is excellent, her easy chemistry with Murphy electric, their surrogate mother/son relationship lending the film a warmth and humanity, grounding it in reality. Toby Jones is good value as Weaver and Murphy’s rival researcher, a puffed up little busybody who desperately wants to prove Silver’s claims regardless of the evidence, and Joely Richardson plays her customary icy bitch role (but she’s sooooo good at it!) while the luminous Olsen is wasted but winning in the superfluous girlfriend role. Oh and that spooky 1200-year-old manchild Craig Roberts puts in a welcome appearance as a superfluous geek.

If the film has a bum note though, it’s De Niro. As the years go by and the Fockers films pile up, eclipsing his more iconic roles, it grows harder to remember De Niro’s last great performance. Heat? Jackie Brown? With the possible exception of 2007’s The Good Shepherd (which he also directed), De Niro has pretty much sleepwalked his way through the last 15 or so years, turning in lackluster performances in mediocre movies like What Just Happened and The Score or scenery-chewing turns in crap like The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and the Fockers films. Part Derek Acorah, part Uri Geller, his spoon-bending mentalist is by turns bland and shouty, displaying none of the charm or seductiveness the character needs. He should be a mystery, an enigma, a messianic svengali. It would have been great to see what an actor like Nicholson, Walken or even Clooney, with his easy charm, could have don with Silver. In De Niro’s hands, he’s a thug in sunglasses. He should’ve been silkily seductive, another Louis Cyphre. Instead, De Niro gives us Jack Byrnes. Again.

Witty, intelligent and subtle, at least right up until the last 10 minutes, Red Lights is an effective, suspenseful thriller, delivering all the right chills and bumps in the night to keep you on the edge of your seat right up until the well signposted twist ending, itself one of Matheson’s red lights.

David Watson

Written and Directed by:

Rodrigo Cortés

Produced by:

Rodrigo Cortés, Adrián Guerra

Starring: