Featured Audience Ratings

• jay n

  
  A lot of talented actors in a silly, dark piece of crap.

• ♥˩ƳИИ &

  
  "Red Lights was a good movie. Not the best, but really good considering the low budget. It also had a really good strong cast of actors, who were all really good in this as well. I enjoyed the story. Creepy, mysterious, and entertaining. I didn't see the movie ending the way… More
  "Red Lights was a good movie. Not the best, but really good considering the low budget. It also had a really good strong cast of actors, who were all really good in this as well. I enjoyed the story. Creepy, mysterious, and entertaining. I didn't see the movie ending the way it did. It was a nice surprise. I hadn't known anything about this film and probably wouldn't have seen it if I didn't stumble upon it streaming on Netflix. So glad I seen it. I would watch this again, if not for the story, then for the performances."

• Candy R

  
  Great cast and plot. Two paranormal researchers travel around the country disproving psychic phenomenon. A famous psychic comes out of retirement and they pull out all stops to discredit him. Interesting twist.

• Dean !

  
  A decent enough thriller with a good twist. Can't say much without giving it away, but was in style to another popular thriller. A good cast line up as well, it's just a little slow at times but worth it in the end.

• Anthony L

  
  The first half of Red Lights is full of intrigue but the second half is an embarrassing mess. Cillian Murphy really struggles when acting alongside two pros; Robert De Niro and Sigourney Weaver. Everyone else is a pointless sub-plot character and poor old Toby Jones is cast on his… More
  The first half of Red Lights is full of intrigue but the second half is an embarrassing mess. Cillian Murphy really struggles when acting alongside two pros; Robert De Niro and Sigourney Weaver. Everyone else is a pointless sub-plot character and poor old Toby Jones is cast on his looks rather than his brilliant acting abilities which makes me sad. The ending is stupid, ridiculous, annoying and leaves the few good bits in the film redundant. Such a shame.

• familiar s

  
  The expectations weren't beyond mediocrity, and hence I wasn't left awfully disappointed. Saw De Niro after quite a while, but while his performance was fine, the sheer grace of his presence apparently couldn't add any charm to the storyline.

• Mark W

  
  With his English language debut "Buried" in 2010, Spanish director Rodrigo Cortes proved that he could handle tension with limited resources. This follow up has him with a slightly bigger budget and some hefty weight behind him in the acting stakes. Again he proves more than… More
  With his English language debut "Buried" in 2010, Spanish director Rodrigo Cortes proved that he could handle tension with limited resources. This follow up has him with a slightly bigger budget and some hefty weight behind him in the acting stakes. Again he proves more than capable in his abilities to build suspense and intrigue but fails miserably in bringing his story to a satisfactory conclusion. Doctor's Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy) work in a scientific field where they investigate paranormal activities and expose the charlatans who are out to make a quick buck. So far so good, until Simon Silver (Robert DeNiro), a renowned psychic, who disappeared 30 years ago, comes out of retirement to make another public appearance. His abilities are said to be very powerful and the doctor's decide to take him on and expose him but the last critic who tackled him, died under mysterious circumstances. With a confident hand Cortes sets his stall up well and builds the tension slowly and assuredly. In the beginning he focuses solely on his two solid leads in Murphy and Weaver before teasingly introducing an enigmatic DeNiro as they all scramble around a script that comes off as an episode of the "The X-Files". The trouble is, the material has about the same staying power as a 50min episode of that series and doesn't nearly deliver as much satisfaction as the investigations of Mulder and Scully. It's in the final third that the film starts to crack under it's own weight and expectations and it becomes apparent that Cortes never really knew how to tie this story together in the first place. This is the most frustrating thing about this film as it certainly has a grip on you and keeps you at just the right length to maintain your interest. Realistically, it could only end two ways; either it's a hoax or... erm... it isn't. Once you realise this, it dawns on you that you might not be satisfied with either. But Cortes is also aware of this and as a result tries to pull the rug from under your feet. As it is, it's one sleight-of-hand too many as he introduces a twist that goes against everything you've seen before. All the events are tenuously linked together in an unravelling that is, quite frankly, preposterous and fails to convince. The three leads in Murphy, Weaver and DeNiro do what they can with the material but ultimately their talents are wasted. As are the talented likes of Joely Richardson and Toby Jones in thankless roles. It's not a complete right-off as, for the most part, the material is there and the premise very intriguing but it falls shamefully short and instead of being poor it's, simply just frustrating. At one point in the film, Murphy's character says "The only way to pull a rabbit out a hat is to put it there first". Well, the same applies to Cortes; he certainly isn't as clever as he thinks he is and if he wants to pull off a good twist, he has to put a decent script there first.

• Liam G

  
  It starts off fine and the pacing and performances are decent, but after the 30 minute mark, it gets worse. And worse. And worse. And worse.

• Shawn M

  
  Entertaining, Interesting, yet very slow and lacked some energy, without cillian, this movie would have been lost.

• The Movie W

  
  With his impressive English language debut, the spam in a can thriller "Buried", Cortes established himself as a talent to watch. Like M. Night Shyamalan after "The Sixth Sense", his follow up has interesting moments but is all too problematic to hold together.… More
  With his impressive English language debut, the spam in a can thriller "Buried", Cortes established himself as a talent to watch. Like M. Night Shyamalan after "The Sixth Sense", his follow up has interesting moments but is all too problematic to hold together. It's a run of the mill thriller but Cortes brings a touch of latin madness to proceedings. One of my least favorite sayings is that old fallback of the religious, "There are no atheists in foxholes". I will concede that there are no atheists in the cinema, I can enjoy a supernatural thriller just as much as someone who actually believes in spirits and higher powers. I could actually contend that atheists have an advantage over spiritualists when it comes to the enjoyment of a horror movie. We put our faith in logic and the knowledge that our destiny is in our own hands helps us sleep at night. The idea that some sort of higher force may actually be in control is the most terrifying concept we can think of. Movies that feature this idea creep us out immensely. If I believed in an all powerful deity it would fill me with a terror that no movie could come close to replicating. It's this reason that made "Red Lights" effective up to a point. The idea of skeptics as our protagonists is something you rarely see and is probably the reason for this movie's European rather than American funding. In a twist on "The X-Files", Murphy's office features a poster of a UFO which reads "I want to understand". The script for "Buried" was written by Chris Sparling but Cortes has self-penned his follow up. Bad idea, he really should have hired someone to help iron out the plot holes and inconsistencies. Individually there are some very well written scenes, Weaver's exposing of Jones' poor interrogation technique a particular standout, but the whole story is held together far too precariously. I can't believe I'm complaining about the presence of the wonderful Olsen but her character is one of the biggest problems, serving no purpose save to explain the plot to idiots or those too busy texting to pay attention to the screen. In a horrific piece of writing she explains a major plot twist through dialogue which is revealed visually in the very next scene. To me this feels like outside interference, as though Cortes' financial backers worried the audience wouldn't be able to follow events without every plot point being hammered home. There are entertaining moments when the plot is put aside and Cortes indulges in creepiness and visual insanity. We get scary vagrants, surreal dreams and one particularly atmospheric sequence where Murphy pays a visit to De Niro's office, decorated like the Black Lodge from "Twin Peaks". These scenes reminded me of some of the great whacko seventies horror movies which attempted to cash in on the success of "The Exorcist"; films like William Girdler's "The Manitou", Michael Winner's "The Sentinel", Larry Cohen's excellent "God Told Me To", and even John Boorman and William Peter Blatty's "Exorcist" sequels. If Cortes had been allowed focus more on mood than plot this would have been a far better movie. Unfortunately this is one red light you don't need to stop for.

• Luke C

  
  A thriller that is too overdramatic & tense for it's own good. Red Lights follows a pair of paranormal debunkers who face their greatest challenge in proving a blind psychic to be a fraud. Often this film suddenly builds up tense music for no reason and there are attempted… More
  A thriller that is too overdramatic & tense for it's own good. Red Lights follows a pair of paranormal debunkers who face their greatest challenge in proving a blind psychic to be a fraud. Often this film suddenly builds up tense music for no reason and there are attempted jump scares that are stupid and too sudden. Before seeing this I expected a killer ending twist, all movies like this have one, some are good while others fail dramatically. Thankfully this one had quite a good one even though it's pretty silly and comes out of nowhere. I LOVED the ending face off between Cillian & Robert. It felt like this is what the film was building up to even though there were quite a few open ties by this time. These being - SPOILER ALERT Roberts & Olsen find out how DeNiro cheated the card test and don't tell anyone. This was a key mistake because by this time Toby Jones announced DeNiro authentic and Cillian started the standoff. SPOILER ALERT OVER. I would in no way call this thriller and the 'tense' scenes came across way too forced. Everything is too over dramatic, throughout you are thinking 'why does this even matter?' Particularly why Cillian wants to prove DeNiro wrong so badly, fortunately at least that one gets answered by the end. When the end twist is revealed there is only a 3 odd minute letter speech and then it ends, I felt there needed to be more of a conclusion seen as these characters would never feature anywhere else, their stories need to end properly yet this one ends about half an hour short. Not to say it didn't drag on because it did, I just feel it should have time jumped to what happened a year or two later but to be honest it isn't that hard to guess. I found the performances pretty good, DeNiro did well as a blind psychic, Cillian was good as the obsessive debunker & Sigourney was very good as the ageing veteran. Overall Red Lights is an enjoyable 'thriller' that may bore you or you may hate the twists and turns but if you know what you are getting into you may like it.

• Jeffrey M

  
  Reading the synopsis for Red Lights, and seeing the cast list, one might think it offers a smart, interesting, and unique take on paranormal phenomena and the societal repercussions for those that fake it. You would be wrong. Red Lights is plagued by an incredibly unfocused script,… More
  Reading the synopsis for Red Lights, and seeing the cast list, one might think it offers a smart, interesting, and unique take on paranormal phenomena and the societal repercussions for those that fake it. You would be wrong. Red Lights is plagued by an incredibly unfocused script, with stilted (and comically verbose) dialogue, stupid plot twists, and terribly written scenes. The direction and composition is particularly bad, with erratic editing, making the scenes seem manically unfocused, and the entire narrative feel remarkably disjointed. Aside from some good cinematography work, the film has no polish. It's as if it was put together on a laptop by a film student. The acting is serviceable, but the cast has nothing to work with. Cillian Murphy seems especially in to his role, but has such a poorly written character, and an apparent lack of direction, that his character's tone is all over the map. The same is true of De Niro's character, with poor De Niro reduced to giving horrendously scripted non-nonsensical monologues, to no effect. The result is just a badly executed, terribly written, and ill-conceived film. It borders on the "so bad its good" territory, but doesn't quite get there, if only because it features names such as Sigourney Weaver and De Niro, and has the occasional competent scene. A disappointing misfire. 2/4 Stars

• Christopher H

  
  Some films exist as placeholders for familiar faces. "Red Lights" is the perfect example of this, as it does nothing for anyone's career (except maybe Elizabeth Olsen). Robert De Niro, Sigourney Weaver, and Cillian Murphy do their jobs by showing up and attempting this… More
  Some films exist as placeholders for familiar faces. "Red Lights" is the perfect example of this, as it does nothing for anyone's career (except maybe Elizabeth Olsen). Robert De Niro, Sigourney Weaver, and Cillian Murphy do their jobs by showing up and attempting this paranormal thriller, but with a paper-thin plot and one of the worst twists in a film that I have ever witnessed, the only thing that you wish to see more of is the uber-talented and attractive Elizabeth Olsen, who is a minor supporting character that is extremely under-utilized.

• Andreia C

  
  It had potential. The first hour was great and interesting, but after that it just got worse and the built up that was constructed in the first hour fell down like a domino. But great performances by Cillian, Sigourney and De Niro, too bad that the plot had some major plot holes.

• Philip P

  
  I was genuinely intrigued by the follow up to director Rodrigo Cortes English-language debut, Buried, last year. With a stellar cast led by Cillian Murphy and a topic that tackles the paranormal I was eager to see what Cortes might do with his own material and thoughts on the subject.… More
  I was genuinely intrigued by the follow up to director Rodrigo Cortes English-language debut, Buried, last year. With a stellar cast led by Cillian Murphy and a topic that tackles the paranormal I was eager to see what Cortes might do with his own material and thoughts on the subject. While the set up feels like every other paranormal feature we've seen in the last few years Red Lights quickly changes pace and becomes a study of studies. It is clear from the beginning Dr. Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) has some type of agenda against those who claim to have the ability to ghost whisper, heal through faith alone, or have any psychic ability whatsoever. With her partner Tom Buckley (Murphy) they go from place to place debunking the false claims of those who believe they can in fact do such things. This is engaging enough, giving us a peek behind the curtain and how such things can be faked. It is when a reclusive, blind psychic comes out of retirement after achieving instant fame in the 70's. Simon Silver as played by Robert De Niro gives what is one of his better performances in the slew of drudge he has recently been appearing in. The problems with the film though come more heavily into play when it loses itself in the second act. There are interesting questions at play here, and even more there are engaging characters around every corner. Even Elizabeth Olsen shows up as Buckley's girlfriend and adds a nice element of credibility to their profession as Murphy naturally portrays a man that is always a bit lost in whatever world he exists, looking to rebel. While you may not see the conclusion coming, it gives itself plenty of hints throughout and builds to a great conclusion. The problem is it doesn't feel earned. It's like it comes out of nowhere. You get lost in the middle only to find yourself wishing something more would have led to this crossing of paths that gives back to both parties more than they bargained for, but leaves the audience with a hunger unquenched.

• Sunil J

  
  I disagree with most on this one. I thought it was a pretty entertaining film with great performance and a really interesting story.

Read all 16 featured audience ratings