Review of Red Lights (2012) by Glenn C — 28 Jun 2012

Rodrigo Cortes, he of the excellent claustrophobic nightmare that was Buried, returns to the cinema screens with Red Lights. Red lights follows a team of sceptics in the form of scientists led by Margaret Matherson (Sigourney Weaver) and her protà (C)gà (C)e Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphey). They professionaly investigate and out bogus psychics. When a familiar face, Simon Silver (Robert De Niro), returns to business after a leave of absence following the suspicious death of one of his critics Tom insists on the team investigating him once again. As evidence appears to pile up supporting Silvers powers, Tom goes on an increasingly desperate chase to debunk the celebrity psychic, but does he appreciate what he is really up against?

Okay, to start with I will lay down some information about me here in the interest of full disclosure.... I consider myself a sceptic, I try to be as sure as possible that whatever I believe in has as much evidence behind it as possible before I will accept it as fact (or as close to as I can get). With this in mind it was always going to be a hard sell to get me to buy into this movie because believe me you really have to have bought into the supernatural elements of this film if you are going to enjoy it unfettered by surges of indignation.

Before anyone accuses me of allowing my own conclusions on the nature of nature if you like or at least the nature of the universe and the supernatural to colour my reception of the film then I freely admit that the things this film had to say, or rather state were personally irking. Why? Well it's not because I can't watch a film that bases itself in a religious or alternative standpoint. The Last Temptation of Christ was a remarkable film in my opinion and films such as the Matrix explore messianic, supernatural, religious and philosophical positions that I don't agree with but I can still watch the film without wanting to hurl abuse at the screen.

The same can be said for the Exorcist and the omen or even Ghostbusters amongst others. Red Lights annoyed me so gravely because it parrots all the worst kind of Fox news and fundamentalist theist bullshit that the likes of Bill O Rielly would trot out about sceptics, and expects to be taken seriously. The sceptical characters here, Tom Buckley and Margaret Matherson are presented as being rather arrogant despite some sensitive handling of one particular family at the beginning of the movie. They swan about like they're in charge of police forces and bust bogus psychics literally as if they have a vendetta against them. This is what turns out to be true. But we soon get to the point that I almost walked out which is as we find out that they all have very painful experiences that led them to deny the supernatural......it's the usual trotted out accusation that usually comes from theist apologists that all sceptics are as such because they lost god or are butt hurt in some way due to a tragedy.

If this wasn't reinforcing an oft repeated strawman of an attack then I may have let it go, but no. not just one of them but both of them have this single event that led them away from a spiritual mindset. They can't just be sceptical, they both have to be broken,sad people Give me a fucking break. To keep adding to this shit pile of sceptic abuse they are both fairly dysfunctional with Weavers character being an isolationist spinster, shunning her colleagues work into parapsychology by dissing their entirely faulty work. Suffice to say she's a lonely woman who's desperately trying to justify her sons cabbage like existence on life support. He has no chance of recovery but she can't let him go and she's justifying not turning off the life support by insisting that he'll be gone forever if he dies bodily. Which is of course the case but hardly a good foundation for her life's work and lets acknowledge the inference that's reinforced later that the sceptical position is one of self denial and deliberate and malicious ignorance of things that can only be experienced and not proven. An attack on rationality and scepticism is exactly what this movie seemed to be to me, upon this one and probably only viewing I left the cinema with a deep sense of having been insulted both practically and intellectually and while I admit to not being one for believing in the real life plausibility of this kind of subject matter, quite the opposite in fact, it's worth noting that I could sit through other religious and supernaturally based stories without feeling directly insulted by the tone and inferred superiority that this film took. It makes its stand, not as a work of fiction but of a commentary on sceptics and scepticism...... anyone who describes themselves as a sceptic will probably find this very difficult to sit through because it patronises the people who we follow on the screen, and by extension anyone who holds that kind of point of view, by using tired old arguments and insults that amount to nothing in a critical light. It also has these people making claims of how ignorance is sometimes better........ whatever these people are called here it's plain they are not portrayed in the way that most sceptics I know and know of actually are. The film takes great pains to shift the same questions one would have of believers on to the sceptics. Frankly it doesn't hold up because where as to believe it takes faith, which involves a suspension of critical analysis, scepticism is about looking at the evidence for and against to work out what is demonstrably true. The kind of sceptics depicted here are supposed to be the sort that use scientific method to determine the status of the claims. The characters are however tarred with the same kind of presuppositions that typify irrational belief....these are not scientists, these are a creationists depictions of scientists with all the attendant projection that that involves i.e. that it takes more faith to be an atheist than it does to believe. This is a very agenda laden film based on suspicious and erroneous presumptions on the nature of sceptics and scepticism that makes no defence of the supernatural, only attacks on those who don't believe.

Otherwise and on a more positive side, the film looks great, has Del Torro's recognisable sense of style and is well paced. The cast is a collection of very solid actors who I enjoy though they seems to struggle from time to time and the first half of the film, despite the forays into absurdities, it is quite interesting as it examines the sceptics methods, if only the writing had taken a step back and not been so focused on hackneyed portrayals. Believe me it seemed that lines were being delivered through gritted teeth on more than one occasion and I'm not convinced that all the performers were sold on some of this stuff to be brutally honest.

Red Lights is to be blunt a hugely disappointing film with a climax that simply beggars belief for all but the most credulous. While I don't expect a film to have to be representative of all viewpoints or even to pander to my own view of the world or existence Red Lights was so far over the top in terms of preaching that even my memory of M Night Shyamalan's diabolical presentation Devil paled into comparison. If you really believe in the supernatural or buy into faith and have a neo-conservative take on scepticism of faith and indeed the sceptics themselves then you will probably be very happy as this will not challenge you in the slightest and it will confirm all the stuff that Fox news and it's ilk spout. Unfortunately it's simply deeply dishonest.

It has an unhealthy attitude that typifies the worst kind of mind set I know and that makes this movie slightly poisonous and rather ridiculous in the worst way possible. The only advantage of this being such a bad story is that it at least enrages the more astute viewer enough to not be bored, but man I was glad when it was over and done with. I personally left the cinema with one message from this film .... If you don't have faith in the un-testible, if you need proof of claims of magical powers, then you have either had or will have an experience that will prove you wrong and you will die a lonely old empty shell of a person with only the very few like minded colleagues to see you off .. And don't think I didn't notice that the lead characters were essentially James Randi split two ways. Subtle that, very subtle. Though the immediate comparison is that of Mulder and Scully it simply doesn't hold up as well because in that case there was a much more robustly sceptical character and scientific method was not a primary target, it was something the characters had to work with and reconcile with what they saw and experienced. What ever the conclusions it made it never seemed to be derisory of Scully as a sceptic, this is not the case with this film, it doesn't just ask for suspension of disbelief, it demands it and ridicules those who can't or won't.

While it happily recognises that there are bogus psychics out there (a Peter Popoff wannabe is exposed early on) its an almost apologetic case of recognising some very blatant cases of charlatanism, as if to say, of course there were fakes in the past but that doesn't mean you have to doubt.....there is nothing exactly earth shattering or weighty enough to redress the balance.

With the exception of a truly brutal fight scene and and the scenes of the teams and psychics methods of work I'd have to conclude by saying, What a let down â¦.. what a huge, huge let down.

The only thing I find amusing about this film is that if you google image it, theres a lot of content about amsterdam pops up.