Review of Red Lights (2012) by John M — 28 Sep 2012

Surprise out of nowhere. Easiest way to sell this? Sigourney Weaver, Cillian Murphy: Paranormal Busters. I just stumbled across this movie, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I literally knew nothing about this before watching.

I didn't even know what genre it was classified under, so you can imagine how happy I was when I discovered that it is wholly engaging. Right from the beginning, I noticed that there was far too much craft behind this for it to be from some sort of amateur, and sure enough, this is from Rodrigo Cortes, who directed one of my favorite movies from 2010, Buried.

I really enjoyed almost everything about this; there's a healthy amount of skepticism from the two leads, which is absolutely necessary for this type of story to be effective. A lot of what hooks you into investing in the movie is how much fun it is to see them crack cases as bullshit.

I was amazingly right there with it every step of the way for almost two hours, but I was really worried that they weren't going to be able to stick the landing with the finale. Thankfully, they made up for it with the epilogue.

The only major complaint I have here is that there is a spot at about the hour mark where there are about a dozen jump scares in a five-minute window, and they really didn't fit the tone of the rest of the film.

Regardless, I'm not one to let a nitpick stand in the way of my rating. Rodrigo Cortes, you are officially on my radar of directors to look out for.