Dir. Rodrigo Cortes. 2012. USA/Spain. 119 mins. Robert De Niro, Cillian Murphy, Sigourney Weaver.
A dollop of The X Files, a dash of The Sixth Sense and a whole lot of blah come together in Rodrigo Cortés’s supernatural suspense thriller. Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy play a pair of academic debunkers of paranormal hokum with a sublimated mother-son thing going on (perish the thought that an older woman and younger man might be romantically involved!). Their routine is upended by the public comeback of a sinister Uri Geller-style medium (Robert De Niro): cue electrical fires, creepy homeless people and lots of dead birds.
Red Lights musters a few moments of unease but never really kicks into gear: it’s as lame as a thrill ride and inane as a wannabe critique of rational enquiry. Cortés (Buried) writes, directs, produces and edits without showing much flair for any of them. His dreadful script in particular leaves the weirdly good cast stranded: Murphy is shouty, De Niro somnolent, Weaver valiant; Toby Jones, Joely Richardson and Elizabeth Olsen are similarly wasted. The clue’s in the title: don’t go. Ben Walters
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