Guest Review : Red Lights (non-3D)

"Red Lights" (Non 3D), with heavyweight casts like Robert De Niro, Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy, coined to be the "The Sixth Sense" of 2012, looks set to be a horror movie not to be missed (at least to the horror movie fans). 

My friend, Ben has kindly written a superb review about Red Lights and how he compared it with "The Sixth Sense"?

Oh, since this is a non-3D/IMAX movie, thus no resources has been shared in this blog yet, before reading the review, you may want to check out the trailer first:

Ben's Review on Red Lights:

“Red Lights” was a little oddball movie, one which you have no idea where it was heading. Done correctly it would be elevated to cult film status, if not; it would be thrown to be a filter film whenever a huge blockbuster hit town. In our case, it was used to cushion the impact of “The Dark Knight Rises”, that says a lot of the film distributor’s confidence on this movie.

Touted by the distributor as the year “Sixth Sense” was both misleading and revealing, misleading as the movie had nothing to do with paranormal activities, while revealing that there was a big twist in the end. While the big twist in “Sixth Sense” made me want to re-watch to catch those parts, “Red Lights” big twist made me went “Huh?” as it completely crushed the whole tone, message, whatever the protagonist stood for ; anything this film had is now gone.

The film had a strong promising story, borrowed the theme from “The X Files” series to the extent that the iconic UFO poster from Mulder’s room was presented in the movie, with “I Want To Believe” tagline changed to “I Want To Understand”. That pretty much sum up the 2 lead characters - Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy's role, they were Physicist on task to debunk fake mediums and psychics. In short you got 2 Scully’s like skeptics. 

They met their match in the form Robert De Niro, the famous blind psychic, who suddenly reappeared after decades of hiatus when Robert then biggest critic’s mysterious death. 

Initial portions on how they debunk the psychics was interesting and pretty much gave you the insight on how such miracle shows done by fake psychics works. However halfway the film changed from psychological drama to downright horror movie, which all the usual loud sudden noise and shadows were deployed for a cheap shock at the audiences. The conclusion, as mentioned turned out to be a messy event.

A pity as the film had such strong cast, all 3 leads had good chemistry on screen, notably between Sigourney and Cillian, and between Cillian and Robert. Overall the first half definitely better than the remaining, and the big twist turned out be unsatisfactory closure on the expense of the actors’ performances. 

For more details of the film, check out the links below:

1. IMDB : Red Lights

2. Rotten Tomatoes : Red Lights

3. Official Site : Red Lights

Cheers!