Red Lights (Rodrigo Cortés)

[B-side]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1748179/

[B-side]

Red Lights left me a bit bewildered since I was so enthralled, then the rug was pulled out at the end and I'm unsure how I feel about it. I'll say this, though: it uses the transcendent fictive powers of the medium it allegorically interrogates very cleverly. What we have is essentially a film about fiction. Half the film is spent with skeptics detailing the manners in which a person who claims to have supernatural abilities manipulates and uses sensorial trickery to accomplish their feats of para-psychological phenomenon all while employing the very same artifice to draw you in and subject you to the same types of sensual incitement that allows those of us to "believe". Is Silver a fraud, or is he the one that's real? The director stages and edits the film in such a fashion that will allow for the existence of doubt in the skeptic's mind initially, then carefully switches gears and seems to take both sides. Scenes of explanatory science are juxtaposed with those of allegedly supernatural phenomenon; the close edits exposing the vulnerability of the mindful viewer and placing them within an agnostic populace. We're made to submit to the same psychological game being denounced by the leads via the natural transformative abilities of cinema. Both sound and visual stimuli are employed to pull the thought process in opposing directions. The actual telling of the story matters, but the inherent influence of the cinematic medium -- and most importantly the fact that we are all able to be manipulated with the power of suggestion -- gives the film a baseline to jump from in its surreptitious invocation.

[transmogrifier]

I wonder: is this film good in a "this film is really good" kind of way, or a "Top Gun is a masterpiece" kind of way?

[EvilShoe]

I have a thing for these kinds of flawed off-beat genre flicks, so I voted yay.

I actually like the extra layer a third act revelation adds to the movie, but I wish it wasn't as underdeveloped.

[B-side]

I wonder: is this film good in a "this film is really good" kind of way, or a "Top Gun is a masterpiece" kind of way?

Both?

[transmogrifier]

Both?

Oh.

[eternity]

This was so bad, you guys.

[Neclord]

This was so bad, you guys.

So bad!

[Rowland]

Much of this doesn't work, and yet I found it a moderately interesting failure with many redeeming facets. Even the much-derided twist ending, while ludicrous and self-negating, is very similar to that of a certain early-00s film I love.

[Skitch]

I was really enjoying this until the end when I didn't get the answers to the questions I was asking.

Then the rug yank that showed I was looking in the wrong place and asking the wrong questions.

I want to cry foul...but they repeatedly told me to quit being distracted and looking where they told me to look. I have to say thumbs up.