Red Lights

source: Red Lights

Terrible movie, actually did nothing for me. I would rather watch Home Alone again it has more meaning than Red Lights. An earthquaking scientist unveils a showman's weakness toward true power...what is the point of that. Shaking the camera and that's supposed to intrigue the audience after 100 years of film making techniques....? DeNiro is not suitable for the role. Very talented actor, very poorly filmed. Weaver's hair stylist should be fired. Maybe the movie themes are starting to get more extreme and the old actors are not cut out for it. Nothing happens through out the entire movie you're just waiting for the ending credits. Sad thing is DeNiro is in this movie.

I can sum up this mess of a film in a few short paragraphs: Sigourney Weaver was amazing. A brilliant performance a kin to her role in Copy Cat as Criminal Psychologist Helen Hudson. Weaver plays Margaret Matheson, a no nonsense style professional out to help people understand that paranormal abilities are not real. Sigourney's role is abruptly cut short after 35 mins - for no reason! Funnily enough after Matheson dies, the film just nose dives into a bowl of mess. Cillan is weak, De Niro is just appalling. Rodrigo Cortés has no control over the movie at all. I'm not even quite sure what happened in some scenes. This film could have been something brilliant, if Weaver was the lead and focused on her character. I don't want to see this film again.

The skeptical psychologist Dr. Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and her assistant, the physician Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy), are specialists in disclosing fraudulent paranormal phenomena. When the famous psychic Simon Silver (Robert De Niro) reappears to his public after many years of absence, Tom becomes obsessed to investigate whether Silver is a fraud or not. "Red Lights" could have been a good movie with an intriguing premise. Unfortunately the plot is destroyed by the awful rushed conclusion, leaving many open questions behind. My vote is six. Title (Brazil): "Poder Paranormal" ("Paranormal Power")

This could have been a great film. With such an outstanding cast, and potentially intriguing plot, but unfortunately it is just stupid. I really wanted to like it, but I struggled to like anything about it. The script was banal and the topic poorly researched. Someone was just plain lazy putting the story together. Here are some examples that really irritated me. Dr Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) is a psychologist who researches and debunks paranormal phenomena, in particular exposing frauds. Yet inexplicably she chooses not to investigate Simon Silver (Robert De Niro). Why? Because she has been riddled with guilt morning til night for 30 years after he made her DOUBT for a second. What??? What is wrong with a skeptic having doubts? Skeptics should have doubts, or at least be open to the possibility of having doubts. Scientists are supposed to ask questions and objectively seek evidence. You can't be objective if you have already made up your mind. Surely her momentary doubt should motivate her to investigate more thoroughly? That brings me to the second problem. The head of the Scientific Paranormal Research Centre, Dr Shackleton, prior to running his experiments states publicly that he expects to find proof of Silver's powers. Not objective. And Silver himself gets to approve the team of investigators. Not objective. These are serious flaws in the design of a scientific experiment, which is supposed to be free from bias and where the researchers need to be independent of the subjects. Even the media, let alone scientists, would reject this "experiment" as just hype for lack of objectivity and independence. Third irritation. Basic research would show that psychics are not a grab-bag of special powers. They claim to specialise in particular areas. But Silver bends spoons and performs psychic surgery and projects thoughts onto photographs and reads minds and levitates and moves objects. That's like making an Olympic athlete run, jump, throw javelin, swim, ski and shoot. De Niro's character would've been so much more credible had it actually resembled the behaviour of real life "psychics". Obviously films have licence to stretch the truth, especially with this kind of subject matter, but it still needs to be believable or it just doesn't work. Finally, the twist at the end that apparently no-one sees coming. Could've worked, but handled very clumsily. Really just a poor copy of the ending of the Sixth Sense. By the time you get to the end you're expecting a twist of some kind, but at that point I didn't care enough to try to work out what it was. Sigourney Weaver is the only reason I'm giving it 3/10. De Niro just looks silly.

Surprisingly little actually happens in this movie, which Sigorney Weaver and Robert DeNiro presumably made for an easy paycheck. No one would confuse this with an Oscar contender. I won't spoil the ending in this review. Actually, there's rather little to spoil. The movie plods along with tense music until literally the very end, when the great secret is finally revealed. Visually, there's some nice design in the film. The acting isn't bad, but there's no real memorable performances either. Watch this if you have nothing else to do. Anyway, that's it. This is just an extra line to meet IMDb's criteria :-)

Crap - plain and simple. What started out as an interesting look at real, rational people trying to drag our society out of the mental dark ages, turned into a movie that ended on a credulous, cheap plot twist. One of the debunking rationalists was...wait for it... A PSYCHIC! I have never been more disappointed in a movie in my life! Again, What started out as an interesting look at real, rational people trying to drag our society out of the mental dark ages, turned into a movie that ended on a credulous, cheap plot twist. One of the debunking rationalists was...wait for it... A PSYCHIC! I have never been more disappointed in a movie in my life!

With a good cast like this how could it collapse so terribly? A terrible story with very bad direction. The story starts off with some potential - investigating and debunking bogus paranormal claims. Then it just totally falls apart with a disgusting toilet beating up and anti climactic ending. The direction is terrible with cheap shock tactics and over dramatic music. I know it's hard to get roles after a certain age but Sigourney and Robert are way too good for such a bad story. Even Cillian is too good for this movie. Just don't bother at all.

I had high hopes for this movie after reading some of the glowing reviews on this site. I figured that with Weaver and De Niro this had to be on course. I will admit that the first 45 minutes of the movie are excellent, engrossing and you really feel like you are on course for something special. But then it all goes horribly wrong. It turns into a total circus with a VERY easy to predict plot. I've read reviews of people saying stuff about needing to be a genius to figure this movie out. The clues are blatantly obvious! As for the characters, it's the best I've seen Weaver since the Alien movies. As for De Niro, why does he keep choosing roles that are just not suited to De Niro? Murphy is best sticking to being a slime bad guy. This could have been a genuinely good story but turned out to be a poor imitation of an M Night Shyamalan movie. I cannot recommend this movie.

Don't be discouraged with the summary of my review!! i am merely stating the fact that if the studio had been more enthu about the project it would had been a successor to the movies like inception or the prestige!! I saw this movie and i was quite excited about it simply because the plot was somehow familiar yet original..in the sense of their connection with the basic idea of a typical human life's struggle to understand the unexplained phenomena of para or divine potential of human mind which has been never proved or rejected completely in modern science. The starting of the movie might not appeal to most of the people as i also felt that the initial 10-12 minutes were not a good way to begin which simply never connected with the main theme of the movie...but as i said it was ambiguous yet was connected to the movie within the very first thirty minutes or so..yet most of the audience might go with me on this that it was not a good way to start the movie...may be the writing had to be more experimental or visionary to scout a new scenario to feel more majestic enough to build a sense of connectivity with the modern day conflict to accept or reject the thought of something superior than science. But never the less the script yet had enough material to keep the interest of mine going..i was dying to know what actually is gonna happen..thought i might like to add that these movies are totally driven from plot or the thought process yet some clever direction and sound effects and nice acting made it possible for me to enjoy this movie..i will not say it is great but it is decent enough to share with people you know...but don't want to compare it with inception or other psychological thriller of recent times...but still i was not happy the way studio has never taken it seriously. A good budget might have ensured it a more improved run on the predecided media but overall it is still a good watch. I would like to say that Cillian Murphy(Red Eye fame) amazed me with me his performance. Robert De Nero was typical and Sigourney Weaver also done her part well. There was nothing to do much for others. Overall movie does have its predictable nature but one had to be smart enough to figure it. My only complaint is that it had potential but the production house never was excited about it so it is a just one time watch. Watch it and you will not be disappointed but may not feel entertained like inception or the prestige or the 6th sense. A brilliant effort despite the production constraints!!! 7/10