Rodrigo Cortés’ thriller Red Lights, now available on DVD, is constructed around one very interesting character dynamic, and one truly strange conceit that is, even by its own terms, pretty preposterous. The interesting part: A paranormal investigator (played by Sigourney Weaver), who specializes in debunking false psychics and hauntings, and who has a staunch Scully-like skepticism about all things paranormal (sample dialogue: “There are two kinds; those who think they have a gift, and those who are deliberately duping people. They’re both wrong.”), goes head-to-head with a blind stage psychic (played by Robert De Niro), who seems to have actual gifts, meets with people in secret to intone enigmatic lessons about perception, and can do the old-timey shtick of reaching into people’s abdomens with his bare hands in order to heal them (sample dialogue: “Do you question my power?!”). They have been at odds for over thirty years, and when the psychic emerges from a long retirement, the investigator is enraged and afraid; he is frustratingly opaque about his methods, and she is unable to expose him. Had the film been entirely about these characters and their respective conflicting passions, Red Lights may have been much more interesting.
Sadly (and here’s the preposterous part), the film is set in an oddball world wherein colleges have not one, but two paranormal investigation wings, and that those two wings are constantly at odds. This is a world where the dealing of TV psychics, and the debunking thereof, seems to carry massive repercussions for not only all of mankind, but the personal lives of all those involved. I didn’t think that the lives of TV psychics or the lives of professional psychic debunkers were all that important in the grand scheme. It’s essentially a largely unrecognizable world. Indeed, the film is so hazy and spooky, and so insists that everything is dripping with spooky importance (the cheap jump scares, eerie photography, and weirdo plot twists are all out in full force), that you might be laughing, if you weren’t scratching your head.
The script does have a few tantalizing lines about the nature of perception, but it’s all mere freshman-level navel gazing in what amounts to be a pretty cheap and baffling thriller, whose confusion is eschewed by the presence of some pretty awesome actors. Aside from De Niro and Weaver, the main character is played by Cillian Murphy, Weaver’s protégé, and Elizabeth Olsen, a spunky intern. They all give their all, and Murphy all but saves the film.
As can perhaps be predicted, there’s a grand finale plot twist, which alters a lot of what we had just seen, but it comes kind of out of left field, and it also doesn’t make much sense.
I suppose the dealings of TV psychics would feel more relevant and important had it come out in about 2004, when TV psychics were enjoying an uptick. Then, perhaps, the exposure thereof may have felt like a large and noble goal. Well, maybe not. Red Lights is still so murky and ponderous, any topicality it could have had is weighed down by its gross, vague, foggy weirdness. If the big finale is essentially a dry view of the scientific method at work, then perhaps you need to rethink your film as a “thriller.” Oh, wait, maybe it is a thriller, as, late on the film, Cillian Murphy has a random fight with a previously unseen bearded guy in a public restroom for no reason whatsoever. Fights mean thrills, right?
The DVD features interviews with the cast and director, but do little to expose light on the oddball plot. Cortés merely talks about the door of perception, the nature of truth, science, doubt, etc. etc. He does sound like he knows what he’s talking about, although that doesn’t necessarily translate to screen.
