Red Lights (2012)

I'm not in the best psychic mood to write an entry, and the current subject it's really "appropriate". I'll dig right into the the subject, "Red Lights", a quite obscure thriller from last year = no marketing, despite the names written on the poster.

The movie's action is focused on a team from a Psychology department in an university, team that has as main activity .. "myth busting" to cut it shortly, or more exactly unmasking supposed paranormal gifted people. The main subject is a blind guy, Simon Silver = a sort of Uri Geller (at least he's bending spoons live on TV), who after disappearing from the public eye for 30 years stages a comeback meant to prove the public that the unreal is real.

Why ? That's a question stated at some point in the movie. Why is it needed to unmask a supposed-to-be medium, mentalist, etc ? And again in the movie somebody gives an answer. Which sounds more or less like this: Let's say that some day a women in pain prefers to ask a so called alternate therapist who impressed her through his miraculous curing sessions. The guy comforts her after "healing" her energetic aura and tells her that everything will be ok. Later, when the situation gets worse the woman finds out that she has cancer in a stage that wasn't treated at the right time.

I could have started a long debate related to the movie message, but I guess that the "approximate" quoting above is sufficient. Moreover, I'd rather not get deeper into the subject because I would be too subjective (although I don't know if I can hold it). "The sleep of reason gives birth to monsters" says a sketch by Goya. And a pretty long part of the movie follows this line (in a less radical manner though). As any driven-by-reason scientist (although the movie offers also a counterexample) the "myth busters" team doesn't believe in unexplained phenomenons. Actually .. and well, I'm already taking it personal :) more correct for the movie would be that they don't believe in paranormal. In what concerns me I'll stick to "unexplained", in the sense that sooner or later (= 0 - millions of years) the unexplained becomes perfectly explainable, and probably way less spectacular and much more reasonable than you might think of it. Probably the fire was a surreal sorcery for the first homo sapiens who lost a spark in a pile of dry wood. But the fire burns if you don't know how to handle it. Stuff that probably applies to many unexplained phenomenons which many claim they can successfully manipulate. The movie drives less on this lane (of burning yourself with the "fire") and more into the world of fake healers (who have no idea how to make "fire" but they're selling heat). Somewhere between the lines though, and in the final conclusion (light spoiler), the directions connect in the sense that somebody who can actually do something out of common would probably keep it as possible out of the world's eyes.

Sorry .. I said I can't hold it :) ... Let me get back to more objective stuff. The movie itself is an average one. We have a neo-noir atmosphere which is captured quite well. The story though, which I don't want to reveal more than I did, has many plotholes. Besides that there are some hard to believe scenes, action threads left unfinished, and other problems in the script. As a conclusion, the script .. effectively as script, could've been written much better than it is. It compensates a lot through actors: Robert de Niro, Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy and also ironically, despite what I just said ... through the story. More exactly through a twist which you don't see coming, and not the least .. through a sufficiently deep message to take it first time either as white, either as black, but in reality is a pretty inexact shade of grey.

Rating: 3 out of 5