The director of The Machinist and Session 9, Brad Anderson, has once again returned to do another ‘creepy’ movie, although one should be warned that Vanishing on 7th Street does not at all reach the same calibre as these previous movies. I felt that the film began promisingly, and the concept reminded me very much of the brilliant horror/sci-fi film Pitch Black (though transferred into an urban setting without aliens). The film is about a small band of people who encounter each other and try to work out how to survive this mysterious darkness that has encased the city. I’m all up for a bit of mystery in a film, but it’s also nice if the director threw us viewers a bone sometimes and offered us some information. This is where I thought the film was let down, because pretty much everything was left unanswered, which isn’t something I find all that satisfying. The conclusion contained no explanation for any of the events throughout the movie, and this just feels a little lazy to me. Ok, so The Cabin in the Woods had a pretty lame ending, but at least it came up for a reason behind the story! Even something’s better than nothing. It’s funny because in writing this review I am in no danger of giving away anything, because there’s nothing to give away!
I actually thought that there were some decent moments here that were eerie and suspenseful, but there didn’t seem to be much development from the beginning to the end of the film. The ‘scary thing’ is the darkness itself, but once this has been established there’s not a whole lot that can be done with it – aside from having people running away from lights flickering out…how terrifying! A connection can even be made with the film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist, as this used fog instead of the dark. Where I think The Mist worked more successfully is that there was something in the mist which is slowly discovered throughout the film, rather than it just being the mist which is supposed to be scary. Don’t get me wrong, some parts of Vanishing on 7th Street were genuinely tense, but not enough to carry an entire movie, unfortunately.
The characters in the film (played by Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton and John Leguizamo) seemed to frustrate me more than was necessary, as sometimes I felt that they didn’t behave in the way that ‘real’ people would in that situation. No sympathy is really elicited, despite the attempts by the mother looking for her child and the boy who lost his mother, because it made them behave so irrationally. There were hints about the darkness being something to do with each person’s ability to ‘believe they exist’ but this was only briefly touched upon and so I’m not entirely sure where that idea was going. Also, the word ‘croatoan’ seems to have been given some significance, although, having looked up the word for myself, I can find nothing but an island on the outer banks of North Carolina and some reference to the TV series Supernatural. Nothing of which appears to relate to this film.
The main hook of this movie and the only thing that really had something going for it was the opening five minutes of the film as these were probably the most effective in grabbing the viewer’s attention. In just these opening minutes, we are filled with a dozen questions about what the hell is going on here, and so eagerly continue watching to find out more. However, as time drags by, the questions are left hanging in the breeze, almost as if the writer forgot to complete the storyline.
I would call this movie very mediocre with not a whole lot happening, in terms of plot, but the acting was decent enough (for what they had) and there were a couple of solid moments. If you do get the opportunity to watch this film, do so with no expectations about an answer to the mysteries. I’ll save you all some time – we never find out about why the darkness came about or what’s in the darkness that causes the disappearances, we never find out why none of the electricity works or why some people were ‘taken’ but not others, we never find out whether this freak occurrence is happening just in that area or across the whole world. All in all, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher.
