10 Final Movie Scenes That Changed Everything
3. Red Lights
Up until its final three minutes, Rodrigo Cortés' Red Lights is a terrifically engaging supernatural thriller about a physicist, Tom (Cillian Murphy), who specialises in debunking paranormal phenomena.
Tom spends the movie investigating the work of psychic Simon Silver (Robert De Niro), especially following the suspicious death of his boss, psychologist Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver), who had previously investigated Silver.
Tom becomes obsessed with exposing Silver as a fraud, yet he finds himself increasingly surrounded by paranormal phenomena.
At film's end Tom indeed finally exposes Silver's fraud, while it's simultaneously revealed that he himself is actually supernaturally gifted and has been causing the phenomena in his midst.
In the movie's final moments, Tom's voiceover reveals he was aware of his abilities and has been unconsciously seeking out others like himself, before he concludes that he's done denying who he is and will embrace his abilities from this point forward.
It's certainly an interesting idea for a twist, albeit one which feels rushed, manipulative, and disingenuous being shoehorned into the movie's final three minutes.
Many viewers understandably felt cheated that a movie primarily concerned with debunking the paranormal decided to pull a U-turn in the pursuit of a shocking "gotcha!" ending.