Instead of adding to the experience, the picture's ill-conceived twists amount to a severe miscalculation on Cortes' part.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
Before Silver hijacks the plot, Rodrigo Cortés's smart, talky screenplay and tense direction hold our attention, as much for the unpredictability of the story as the ease with which Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy slide into their roles.
New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier
A ghost-busting drama set in a world of mystics, mind-benders and various and sundry fake-psychic gobbledygook. But the weirdest thing is how all the fun gets lost in a bottom-drawer "X Files" story.
Never do you sense an overriding intelligence; Cortés once found laughs and shocks within the coffin-confined Buried, but here's he's got too much room to wander into realms of the ridiculous.
Red Lights reaches for a "The Sixth Sense"-style twist and whiffs it completely.
Village Voice by Nick Pinkerton
Much as I want to believe in Cortés, who is clearly talented and ambitious, there is just too much in Red Lights that encourages agnosticism.
Red Lights' setup is silly but fun, with a fair degree of self-awareness that the film's entire "super-scientists vs. celebrity spiritualists" premise is a hoot.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
As a sinister ESP showman, Robert De Niro is corny and fun.
Red Lights goes astray on so many levels that I gave up trying to figure it out before the end of the second reel.