VANISHING ON 7TH STREET
Directed by Brad Anderson
Produced by Norton Herrick, Celine Rattray and Tove Christensen
Written by Anthony Jaswinski
Released by Magnet Releasing
USA. 90 min. Rated R
With Hayden Christensen, John Leguizamo, Thandie Newton & Jacob Latimore
 

Midway through the supernatural thriller Vanishing on 7th Street, about the earth’s destruction at the hands of shadow people, I turned around in my seat. There was movement behind me. I wasn’t spooked. I was filled with envy. A couple of other critics were standing up and leaving the theater, one by one, to find fresh air, sanity, and happiness. Only during I Spit on Your Grave had I seen such a walkout. And that movie featured an on-screen gang rape.

Vanishing is one of these hybrid ventures, not quite a normal feature film and not quite a direct-to-cable write-off. It opened Friday in theaters, but it has been available for almost a month on pay-per-view. Why? I don’t know how this works out, but I can understand if the distributor’s hedging its bets. Vanishing has few distinctions other than being John Leguizamo’s worst career move since Super Mario Bros.

Filmed by Brad Anderson, the director of The Machinist and Transsiberian and who should know better, Vanishing follows a band of survivors holed up at a bar (on 7th Street) in Detroit. The plot is sort of an Outer Limits episode that goes on three times too long and forgets to have a twist. It seems the world has been plunged into a kind of permanent night, and anyone caught in the darkness outside of a light source is instantly “raptured” by shadow people, leaving nothing but a heap of clothes on the floor.

The human leftovers at the bar are the usual diverse lot: Luke, an I-seem-like-I’m-selfish-but-I’ll-do-the-right-thing anchorman (Hayden Christensen); Rosemary (Thandie Newton, chewin’ scenery), a nurse in a panic over her missing baby; James (Jacob Latimore), a young boy looking for his mom; and Paul, a bookish projectionist (John Leguizamo).

The production has a squalid, bargain-bin feel, from its underwhelming special effects to its B-level cast, some of whom are better than the material (Leguizamo), while others are at the same level (Christensen). (What happened to him? After the flak he got for the Star Wars prequels, he was pretty good in Shattered Glass. Then he practically disappeared. And now he’s here.)

A movie like this, no matter how wacky the premise, has to be tight with its rules—and this one just makes them up as it goes along. Sometimes a little flickering match or a glow stick is enough to protect someone from the shadows, sometimes it’s not. Batteries work at the convenience of the plot, and a lamp that’s powered by the sun apparently chugs along throughout the movie despite the lack of a single ray of daylight for most of its 90-minute running time.

Then there is the deeper, fundamental nonsense. The reason for the shadow people invasion is a mystery. But at one point, Paul rambles on about the lost colony of Roanoke—the first English colony in North America, which disappeared without a trace. The only clue to their whereabouts was the word “croatoan” carved on a tree. This historical curiosity is supposed to somehow relate to the characters’ predicament (“Croatoan was a warning!”). However, in an absurd coincidence that should spark an audience riot, Paul is seen reading about Roanoke and “dark matter” in the very first scene, yet later he cogently and fluently explains the connection when he needs to.

Ultimately, I guess we’re supposed to take the whole killing darkness thing as a curse, a sign of divine displeasure—this reading is helped by a politically correct and dim Adam and Eve variant at the end. “So you’re saying this is a punishment. For what?” asks Luke. That’s something I’ve been wondering myself. Brendon Nafziger
February 19, 2011