Red Lights- a Skeptic Movie

 

Seeing as Hollywood has drawn so bountifully on the woo-woo scene, I asked myself one day if there are any big screen features inspired by the skeptic movement. It turns out that there is. Red Lights is a 2012 English language Spanish film directed by Rodrigo Cortés; and, unlike most Spanish films, it is not melancholy and depressing. It stars Sigourney Weaver as Margaret Matheson, a Susan Blackmore-like psychology professor, dedicated researcher, author and lecturer on the paranormal and related subjects. She is a staunch disbeliever in anything out-of-the-ordinary and spends all her time investigating ghosts and similar phenomena and coming to the conclusion every time that they are caused by nothing more than fraud, delusion and mistakes. She is accompanied everywhere by her trusty sidekick, Dr Tom Buckley, a much younger man played by Cillian Murphy, whom she seems to have informally adopted. She often gets into arguments with an open-minded parapsychologist at her university, Dr Shackleton,  played by the diminutive Toby Jones of Midsomer Murders fame. These debates are cringeworthy partly because they are laced with feminism, but also because they are so unrealistic. Jones' character is a favourite of the university and gobbles up all the funds while the skeppers only get the scraps. In reality, anybody who studies "anomalous psychology" from any perspective will find difficulties in getting subsidies. Certainly the dean's office would never prioritize "buh-leev-uhz!" over hard-headed rationalists. One very understated supporting role was the performance of Joely Richardson as Simon Silver's sinister tour manager.
 
Matheson and Buckley are fanatical field researchers who follow professional stage psychics wherever they go, desperate to expose their trickery. There is absolutely no doubt the films producers have studied the skeptic movement's history in detail. The first psychic the viewer sees them bust uses a radio earpiece just like Peter Popoff; and even some of the script copies the secret transmissions Popoff's wife used to deliver to him. However, when he is caught the fictional psychic is jailed whereas Popoff never has been, despite deserving it. A far greater challenge is another theatrical clairvoyant, Simon Silver, played by Robert de Niro. Despite their experience and knowing every trick in the book; Matheson and Buckley simply can't work out how Silver does his supposedly fake magic. There are other skeptic references, such as a psychic laboratory based on the descriptions of Project Alpha and an illusion technique identified long ago by Harry Houdini; using a clock to encode secret prompts in ESP experiments. Also paranormal hand surgery. We also learn about Matheson's personal life and the tragedy she suffered that inspired her to take up her crusade against what she considers cranks and charlatans. In one scene she gives a very MBA-esque monologue: "The reason people believe in ghosts is the same as the reason they believe in haunted houses or tunnels of light. Because it would mean there was something after death. I only wish there were; but I'm not prepared to let my beliefs be determined by my desires and my needs." The film has a radical and unexpected plot twist at the end which I will not spoil for you. Interestingly, there has been another review of this film from old Frenchie, see: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/jun/15/psychics-psychologists-red-lights. Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1748179/.
See here for background: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/skeptics-portal.html.