Red Lights Blu-ray Review
Stop, Look, Listen, Close Your Eyes and Repeat
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, October 13, 2012
It's hard to believe that nineteen years have passed since
The X-Files first appeared on TV, but
fans who remember its initial blast of chilly dislocation may appreciate what writer-director
Rodrigo Cortés (
Buried) attempted in
Red Lights and, at moments, achieved. Like Chris Carter's
influential series, Cortés' film is set in a parallel universe that resembles our own just enough to
make its dramatic interplay between belief and skepticism compelling, but not so much as to
interfere with the suspension of disbelief. Carter's FBI barely resembled the real one, and Cortés'
version of academia, law enforcement and scam artists doesn't stand up to scrutiny either, but
that's beside the point. Neither Carter nor Cortés was interested in realism.
The film's title refers to "discordant notes"—warning signs, giveaways, inconsistencies—that
alert the paranormal debunker played by Sigourney Weaver to the con behind whatever psychic
phenomena she's been asked to investigate. Appropriately enough, the film's visual texture is full
of visual "red lights" (figuratively, not literally) that its world isn't to be taken too seriously. First
and foremost is the distancing effect familiar from
The X-Files and countless other thrillers,
when Canadian exteriors are used to substitute for a quintessentially American location (here,
Columbus, Ohio) so that everything is "off" and nothing looks quite right. Cortés and his
cinematographer, Xavi Giménez (
The Machinist,
Transsiberian), add to this effect with stylized
photography, an almost gothic use of shadow and the frequent deployment of video screens and
shots through cameras. It's as if Cortés is doing everything possible to undercut the realistic
illusion of cinema and convert the screen into a giant stage on which a morality play about faith
and illusion can play itself out.
Does it work? Not entirely. The script for
Red Lights isn't grand enough to justify so much
artifice, despite the efforts of an A-list cast that includes, in addition to Weaver, Robert De Niro,
Cillian Murphy, Toby Jones, Joely Richardson and rising star Elizabeth Olsen. The cast keeps
things interesting, but in the end Cortés hasn't achieved anything more than an overdressed genre
tale that barely scratches the surface of the more profound questions of faith he clearly wanted to
explore.
Drs. Margaret Matheson (Weaver) and Tom Buckley (Murphy) work out of a small and
underfunded department at Columbus University, from which they investigate suspected
paranormal activity and people who claim to be mediums or psychics. With one exception,
Matheson has never encountered a situation she couldn't explain or expose as a fraud. Murphy,
who has a degree in physics from M.I.T., is her "hard science" assistant.
Their rival is Dr. Paul Shackleton, whose generously funded department is devoted to
documenting the existence of extrasensory perception, clairvoyance, telekinesis and all of the
other "fringe" phenomena that Dr. Matheson doubts. If Dan Ackroyd's Ray Stantz from
Ghostbusters had ever achieved academic credibility, he'd be Shackleton. Matheson, though, has
a low opinion of her colleague, who she thinks is so eager to find ESP that he cuts corners—and
she doesn't hesitate to show him up in front of his subordinates. Their rivalry isn't a friendly one.
(Posters at IMDb have mocked the plot device that has Shackleton's department getting more
funding than Matheson's, but it's not much of a stretch if you have any experience with
university politics.)
Buckley could get a much better job doing straightforward physics, and Matheson tells him so,
but, like Matheson, Buckley has personal motivations for doing this unusual work. In Buckley's
case, it goes back to a relative who was persuaded by a faith healer not to seek treatment for a
deadly illness. In Matheson's, it goes back to her son, who fell into a coma when he was a
teenager and has been kept alive by machines for many years. Matheson can't bear to pull the
plug. Her son's condition, in turn, is bound up with the one psychic she failed to debunk, a
reclusive blind man named Simon Silver (De Niro), who has just announced a return to public
life after many years in seclusion. A showman and faith healer with a cult-like following, Silver
sells out huge auditoriums with his performances, as he is shepherded around by his protective
publicist, Monica Handsen (Richardson). Matheson is afraid of Silver, but Buckley insists that
they go after him. Eventually they do, having recruited a student from their class, Sally Owen
(Olsen), as an assistant.
Their inquiries into Silver unleash all manner of strange forces, some mysterious (Buckley's
equipment goes berserk at a key moment), and some old-fashioned (Silver has thugs protecting
him). A visit to an imprisoned con man named Palladino (Leonardo Sbaraglia), who "trained"
with Silver and whom Matheson helped expose as a phony psychic, proves unilluminating. But
the real shock comes when Silver announces that he's agreed to be "tested" by Shackleton's
group under rigorously controlled scientific conditions. If he passes these tests, he'll receive
scientific validation from a major university that will enhance both his credibility and his already
considerable public profile. The need to expose him (if indeed he is a fraud) has never been more
urgent.
Red Lights has a number of "reveals" along the way, and some of them are easy to anticipate
(maybe all of them, depending on one's personal propensity for second-guessing movie plots).
There's a school of "criticism" that finds a film flawed when you can see a plot development
coming, but I don't subscribe to it. The earliest known form of western drama, Greek tragedy,
relied on the audience's knowledge of the story's end. In modern times, Alfred Hitchcock
insisted that
true suspense results from giving the audience more information than the characters.
Red Lights follows this directive by planting clues about major events to come—"red lights", as
it were, that something is awry in the current picture we're seeing. Viewers who pick up on these
signals are simply following the film's narrative design, not finding its flaws.
What undoes
Red Lights is the same limitation that ultimately took down
The X-Files, which is
that by the time you unravel all the artifice and mystery, there turns out to be not much there. The
poster on Buckley's wall may have changed from Agent Mulder's "I Want to Believe" to the
more rational "I Want to Understand", but
Red Lights doesn't contribute any understanding. The
status quo is the same at the end as at the beginning: Most paranormal phenomena have ordinary
explanations, nearly all psychics and mediums are frauds, and people suffering physically or
emotionally make easy marks. Every so often, something occurs that defies scientific analysis,
but you won't find answers in a media circus.
