2012's "Red Lights", directed by Rodrigo Cortes and starring Sigourney Weaver, Robert De Niro, and Cillian Murphy, begins with an extremely high-suspense séance scene. Weaver and Murphy are working together to attempt to prove the medium and the paranormal activity is fraudulent- an interesting twist to watch them use the same equipment and techniques as other paranormal "researchers" we've seen in other films who are trying to find positive evidence. The scene quickly shows the deep professional connection and expertise of the two scientists, who despite frightening bangs and an enthusiastic hairdresser-turned-medium, easily expose the young daughter as the culprit and the hairdresser's tricks. It's engaging to watch them work well together, and even begin to probe deeper into the mismatched pair's pasts as reasons for their intense desire to disprove the existence of real paranormal activity.

However with the sudden reappearance of the only person to ever give Sigourney Weaver's character cause to doubt herself and her beliefs, De Niro's blind psychic Silver, the story totally goes off track. I get the idea of having Weaver, the master scientist, confront her old enemy and fail, causing the apprentice (Murphy) to have to pick up where she left off and prove Silver a fraud. The execution of this, unfortunately, is awkward at best. Murphy's personal and professional judgment become increasingly derailed, and we don't get any further insight into his meltdown or how he figures out Silver's weaknesses. By the later half of the film I had completely lost interest, and even when I tried to refocus my attention to figure out how he was going to catch Silver, it was too confusing for me to pick it back up.

The good: Most performances are believable and expert (although I kept waiting for Cillian Murphy to go stalking someone in his scarecrow mask...), the beginning séance is a great twist on the paranormal phenomena idea, and the student/teacher dynamic moves the plot along through the first half.

The bad: confusing second half, De Niro's somewhat bumbling performance (I wasn't convinced Silver was smarter than the scientists or menacing at all), weird unexplored romance between Murphy's character and one of Weaver's students, unfocused and unappealing second half as Murphy's character slowly descends into an impotent, whiny, nut job.