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Red Lights – The Bleeding Cool Review

Red Lights – The Bleeding Cool Review

I can definitely say this for Red Lights: it's never boring. In fact, of the films being released in the UK this Friday that I've seen, Red Lights is the one that I'd most recommend going to see, although admittedly the competition isn't exactly stiff and I have a large personal bias towards the horror genre. Caveat in place, here's the pitch:

Robert De Niro bending spoons.

With his mind, obviously. Otherwise it might not be (as) entertaining.

I won't say that there's never been a film like Red Lights before, since the concept of a team of sceptics investigating supposedly paranormal phenomenon is probably one of the oldest go-to horror plots in the book. It's rare, however, to see a story like this succeed in maintaining the suspense, regarding whether or not the activities have spooky origins or are merely a hoax, right up to the last few minutes; most of the time the film reaches the forty-minute mark before giving in and admitting, "Oh alright, it's ghosts. Now look at these special effects."

Cillian Murphy and Sigourney Weaver take the lead as sceptics Tom Buckley and Margaret Matheson, who work in an underfunded university department that teaches students about the many creative ways that supposed psychics and mediums con people into believing in the existence of supernormal powers. To Matheson's chagrin, the university's parapsychology department is having so much money at them that they're having to create psychic forcefields in order to avoid serious head injury, as Red Lights makes the debatable claim that in modern society sceptics are treated with more scorn that people who think they're possessed by the ghost of your Great Aunt Margaret. After "outing" a small-scale stage medium as a fake, Buckley and Matheson find themselves faced with the great Simon Silver, a once-renowned psychic who has elected to return to the stage after many years in retirement.

The film is partially a melodrama, and the sooner you accept that fact the more readily you'll be able to enjoy it. The writing is decent throughout and shines in places, particularly strong when it displays a very wry sense of humour. Red Lights isn't exactly scary, though there are a few very well-executed jump scares to fill the adrenaline rush quota, and it's primarily a mystery drama rather than a horror film. The ending will inevitably divide opinion, with the majority of people in the "what a rubbish ending" camp, but personally I find myself in the minority camp of people who appreciated it for what it was: a dramatic conclusion that ties together a number of clues set up throughout the rest of the film.

Acting is good across the board, if you don't count the alarmingly bad actors who appear in the opening sequence and then are thankfully never seen again. There are no real stand-out performances but De Niro manages to avoid the potential cartoonish aspects of his character by sustaining a curiously enigmatic front, and Murphy is quite entertaining as the increasingly desperate academic furiously working to take down Silver whilst struggling to keep hold of his own sanity. Young British favourite Craig Roberts has a role as one of Matheson's students. His attempt at an American accent is distractingly unconvincing but if you can ignore that his acting is predictably good and he has excellent on-screen chemistry with Murphy.

Red Lights is a fun film, and if you're going to the cinema this weekend then it's definitely the one you should be buying a ticket for. I would call it "hypnotically" entertaining, but then I would have to quit my job for the sake of humanity.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vatOw6FquzU[/youtube]


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Hannah Shaw-WilliamsAbout Hannah Shaw-Williams

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