Vanishing on 7th Street
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Just about any genre fan can tell you that few things ruin a perfectly good and spooky film quicker than a pat, all-tied-up conclusion. Everyone likes to be chilled right down to their marrow, but there's no denying the disappointment that comes from finding it was all just a mirage; the ghosts that turn out to be the product of a hidden film projector, the supernatural goings-on that are just hallucinations. But films like Brad Anderson's Vanishing on 7th Street are emblematic of a different (but no less dispiriting) kind of letdown: when not only is there no explanation for a fantastic occurrence, but no real attempt to even thoroughly envision it.
Working from a barely-there script by Anthony Jaswinski, director Brad Anderson starts things off simply, with a littering of red herrings. Paul (John Leguizamo), a multiplex projectionist, is just going about his job, keeping the good people of Detroit entertained, when all the lights go out. When they come back on, the theater is emptied of humanity, with rumpled piles of clothing littering the floors and seats, and very faint screams in the distance. Running into a similarly panicked security guard, Paul is terrified to see the man snatched into nothingness by the shadows.
Another survivor of the pseudo-Rapture is Rosemary (Thandie Newton), a physical therapist who's at a hospital when the darkness first swoops down and vanishes everybody. She's barely introduced before the story focuses on Luke (Hayden Christensen), a local TV news anchor whose brusque selfishness is about the closest that the script comes to full characterization. Luke only wakes up the next morning, which provides the film's most arresting image: as he walks the downtown streets, with their emptied cars and disembodied hillocks of clothing, behind him a jetliner (its crew and passengers now presumably gone) silently plunges to the ground.
Jaswinski gathers his three characters together at an island of illumination in a deserted Detroit: a bar where the lights blaze and the jukebox cranks mournful old Motown tunes. The electricity is provided by a churning generator in the basement manned by twelve-year-old James (Jacob Latimore), who's stubbornly waiting for his mom -- who left some time ago to make sure that the lights were on at the church -- to return. Illumination is everything here, as the curious apocalypse has consistently shortened the days and filled the dark spaces with whispering shades and a looming gloom ready to disappear anybody who lingers too long out of the light.
There's little hope to the film right from the start. The change comes too suddenly and devastatingly to provide much chance for adaptation. The survivors do what they can, girding themselves with glow sticks and flashlights, but the outcome seems foregone: the already-sputtering generator will run out of gas eventually and that will be it. Also, each of the characters in the bar is already stretched to the breaking point by the time they show up, which leaves them little room to maneuver in the film's tightly encircled spaces. In lieu of any identifiable energy to circle the wagons and fight against, the characters are left to wail and fret in only the most predictable manner (Rosemary is obsessed with finding her child, Luke is a shallow opportunist who is challenged to rediscover his inner humanity).
While Jaswinski's script provides little raw material for the performers to work with, excepting Latimore (who turns in a credibly terrified performance), none of the actors acquit themselves with much dignity or effort -- Newton in particular seems to be trying to chew all the scenery she left un-gnawed in For Colored Girls. Some writers would have used this inexplicable event (which at first does give a jolt of crepuscular creep) as an opportunity to explore the nature of faith, the strength of community, or even just the randomized dynamics of group survival. Jaswinski did none of that, displaying a paucity of imagination that's at first mystifying and eventually insulting. In the past, with films like Transsiberian, Anderson has shown that he can craft taut and creepy thrillers out of unlikely material. But here, there's little he can do but capture the looks of terror on his actors' faces as the pools of spreading shadow get closer and closer. Again and again.
Working from a barely-there script by Anthony Jaswinski, director Brad Anderson starts things off simply, with a littering of red herrings. Paul (John Leguizamo), a multiplex projectionist, is just going about his job, keeping the good people of Detroit entertained, when all the lights go out. When they come back on, the theater is emptied of humanity, with rumpled piles of clothing littering the floors and seats, and very faint screams in the distance. Running into a similarly panicked security guard, Paul is terrified to see the man snatched into nothingness by the shadows.
Another survivor of the pseudo-Rapture is Rosemary (Thandie Newton), a physical therapist who's at a hospital when the darkness first swoops down and vanishes everybody. She's barely introduced before the story focuses on Luke (Hayden Christensen), a local TV news anchor whose brusque selfishness is about the closest that the script comes to full characterization. Luke only wakes up the next morning, which provides the film's most arresting image: as he walks the downtown streets, with their emptied cars and disembodied hillocks of clothing, behind him a jetliner (its crew and passengers now presumably gone) silently plunges to the ground.
Jaswinski gathers his three characters together at an island of illumination in a deserted Detroit: a bar where the lights blaze and the jukebox cranks mournful old Motown tunes. The electricity is provided by a churning generator in the basement manned by twelve-year-old James (Jacob Latimore), who's stubbornly waiting for his mom -- who left some time ago to make sure that the lights were on at the church -- to return. Illumination is everything here, as the curious apocalypse has consistently shortened the days and filled the dark spaces with whispering shades and a looming gloom ready to disappear anybody who lingers too long out of the light.
There's little hope to the film right from the start. The change comes too suddenly and devastatingly to provide much chance for adaptation. The survivors do what they can, girding themselves with glow sticks and flashlights, but the outcome seems foregone: the already-sputtering generator will run out of gas eventually and that will be it. Also, each of the characters in the bar is already stretched to the breaking point by the time they show up, which leaves them little room to maneuver in the film's tightly encircled spaces. In lieu of any identifiable energy to circle the wagons and fight against, the characters are left to wail and fret in only the most predictable manner (Rosemary is obsessed with finding her child, Luke is a shallow opportunist who is challenged to rediscover his inner humanity).
While Jaswinski's script provides little raw material for the performers to work with, excepting Latimore (who turns in a credibly terrified performance), none of the actors acquit themselves with much dignity or effort -- Newton in particular seems to be trying to chew all the scenery she left un-gnawed in For Colored Girls. Some writers would have used this inexplicable event (which at first does give a jolt of crepuscular creep) as an opportunity to explore the nature of faith, the strength of community, or even just the randomized dynamics of group survival. Jaswinski did none of that, displaying a paucity of imagination that's at first mystifying and eventually insulting. In the past, with films like Transsiberian, Anderson has shown that he can craft taut and creepy thrillers out of unlikely material. But here, there's little he can do but capture the looks of terror on his actors' faces as the pools of spreading shadow get closer and closer. Again and again.
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