Can You Tell Me How to Vanish On Boring Street?

You know when you REALLY want a movie to be great? The director excites you, the premise is up your alley, and the fact that it’s streaming on Netflix just seems like kismet. At a certain point, it’s like the film has to work to NOT be exactly what you want.

Vanishing on 7th Street works awfully hard.

Awfully.

Quick Plot: It’s a typical day in Detroit when the city pulls a Left Behind style blackout that leaves nothing but a lot of clothing and a few stray survivors hanging out in darkness, where only the beam of flashlights will stave off a herd of shadowy figures. Among the living are Paul (John Lequizamo), a film projectionist with a history hobby, Rosemary (Thandie Newton), a physical therapist looking for her baby (and probably named Rosemary for the sole reason of letting reviewers write “Rosemary’s baby”), James (Jacob Latimore), a 12-year-old waiting for his bartender mom, and the offensively named Luke (Hayden “I Hate Sand” Christensen), a field reporter.

The motley crew holds up in a local tavern called Sonny’s (ha ha) fully lit by a backup generator. As the lights begin to dim and their power supply starts to die, Luke convinces the rest to make a break for it by jump starting a nearby truck. 

Jump starting nearby trucks is so very easy on camera.

To go further into the plot might lead to spoilage, except--

SPOILER ALERT--

There’s nothing to spoil because we never ACTUALLY find out anything about anything...anything...about...anything.

Why did most humans vanish? Why weren’t French poodles and squirrels taken? Is there somewhere these things GO? Why DID that Chevy still run, and was it JUST because it was a Chevy? Why was Paul taken into the ether and spit back a few days later? How in The Happening does THAT make sense? Is it aliens? God? Demons? Pulse-ish shadows from another dimension? Hot dogs? Betty Buckley?

GIVE ME SOMETHING!

Sigh. Not every film needs to give us every answer. Is The Shining about ghosts, alcoholism, or Native American genocide? It doesn’t matter if the film is good enough to justify the lack of answers.

Vanishing on 7th Street, however, is not. Anderson creates some excellent spookiness right from the outset, including one of the most effective jump scares I’ve seen in some time within its first ten minutes. The mystery is haunting enough to keep us on edge, but when NOTHING stands behind it, how can an audience possibly be expected to stay on board? Anthony Jaswinski’s script gives us dull squabbling and zero answers, and even though some of the performances do what they can to sell it--okay, really just Lequizamo and the young Latimore, as Newton comes off shrill and Anakin is still Anakin--the movie ultimately feels like a stretched out short story that never had a good ending to begin with.

High Points

It’s probably impossible for a lifelong Star Wars fan to ever get behind Hayden Christensen again, but young actor Jacob Latimore brings a fantastic presence to his role as James. If only he had played Anakin Skywalker...

Fellow history nerds rejoice! Anybody else always intrigued by the mystery of the Roanoke settlement’s disappearance? Let’s see a better film about that

Low Points

Considering Brad Anderson’s past work, I was weirdly disappointed with some of the overbearing soundtrack work in Vanishing on 7th Street. While the jukebox choices had a hauntingly retro feel, some of the scoring was just too much and broke the eerie subtlety of the film’s major mysteries

We learn quite early on that once you’re covered in darkness, you’ll be swooped away (even though WE NEVER KNOW WHERE TO). So how frustrating is it that at a key moment, two of our main characters are being closed in upon by the shadows only to...um, escape and keep freaking out. Way to break the rules and therefore lessen the tension of anything that comes after

Lessons Learned

Never underestimate the importance of glow sticks. Never.

Jukeboxes use an awful lot of power

Try to avoid going to the theaters to see Adam Sandler movies because really, is THAT where you want to be during the rapture?

Rent/Bury/Buy

I’m trying to avoid using the word ‘frustrating’ anymore in this review. It’s not particularly a google keyword I’m looking to catch, but holy Kirk Cameron can I not think of a better adjective to describe Vanishing on 7th Street. The potential is there, and yet the insane coyness of the script seems to dare its audience to give up. At the same time, Brad Anderson continues to show plenty of strength when it comes to building tension, and hey, some of us just love a good rapture. I’m being quite negative on the film because GRRRRR does it make me say GRRRRR, but the premise itself might still be enough to at least give it an Instant Watch try if you like these kinds of things. Just prepare to be ...

(Pause to check thesaurus)

Stymied! Yeah, that’s it...