Kinda Dumb, But Nice: VANISHING ON 7th STREET
VANISHING ON 7th STREET does such a good job at creating a nightmare situation that I happily ignore the truly dumb plot element that could make you dismiss the whole movie. Though you have to get past a major flaw in its logic, its situation is genuinely nightmarish.
One night in Detroit, Paul, a projectionist in a movie theater, is reading about Roanoke and black matter. The lights go out — all of them. Paul’s wearing a battery-powered light so he can see empty clothes in the theater but no people. Rosemary, a physical therapist, and Luke, a TV news reporter, all have their own light sources, too, and everyone ends up at a bar with a gas-powered generator that keeps the lights on for the boy James who is the only one there.
By this point no one is denying what they have seen: If you go into the darkness, you vanish. Figures move inside the darkness and seem to be actively hunting these four, who might be the only living people in Detroit. And night has been getting longer and daytime shorter. With Paul injured, the others have to get a truck started so they can get out of Detroit, at least. With daylight almost gone and the bar’s gas-powered engine running low on fuel, the group has to hurry to escape the city as the shadow people get closer.
VANISHING requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. It’s about a handful of people who by chance survive an event in which everyone else — in their city? in the world? — has vanished. Why? Because they were in the glow of electric lights when the lights went out.
So right off, we’re dealing with something hard to swallow. These people weren’t in the dark AT ALL that first night, not even for a second? Rosemary (Thandie Newton) was just lighting up a cigarette when the vanishing happened, so I guess she just knew to keep her thumb on the lighter, no matter how much it hurt. I mean, wouldn’t YOU do the same if you were in the dark?
No, you wouldn’t. Your thumb would freakin’ hurt and you’d let go.
The other main characters survive in equally unbelievable ways, but you’re left with the choice all moviegoers end up with many times: you can be a grouch and sit there pouting for a couple hours, or you let certain stupid stuff go and try to get into the story and enjoy yourself.
VANISHING’s Big Dumb Plot Thingee is pretty big and very dumb: You’re in a city and you need light to keep the bad guys away, there is an obvious choice which no one even mentions. Most humans don’t need much of an excuse to set buildings on fire, but they don’t even discuss it. Sure, you’d sweat off a few pounds but your other choice is to light all these empty buildings on fire or be gobbled up by the shadow-matter people.
With some real whoppers in its logic, we’re left with the characters. Rosemary is crying about her baby, Luke (John Leguizamo) is kind of a shit, and Paul ends up on his back while James (Jacob Latimore) cries for his mom.
We get backstory after the one-hour point, when bringing it up earlier would have made more sense. It’s like a repertory production of The Mist, and since they couldn’t afford monsters they figured, “Hey! Let’s just use…the dark!” In this case, the very brief suggestions about something inside the darkness are genuinely scary.
The photography and music make the open, car-jammed streets as frightening a place as any haunted house. The creeping darkness is never explained or understood, which adds to the nightmarish feeling.
Stupid choices like not giving an injured character a light lead to a very creepy scene in which we see creeping shadows toward a character. It’s so quick you could miss it, but it’s more effective at digging into that fear place in your reptile brain than a jump scare.
“I’m here because I will myself to exist,” says one character. The loss of the self in infinte darkness is the core of many horror stories, and this concept links VANISHING to the Val Lewton-Twilight Zone tradition of fantasy films that are more concerned with existence and mortality than spectacle. That’s no surprise considering the director is Brad Anderson, the less-prolific Steven Soderbergh.
Brad Anderson’s previous films include the great SESSION 9 and THE MACHINIST, which deserves some attention from the folks who go on forever about that actor’s movie about the psychotic businessman. VANISHING ON 7TH STREET will give you the heebie jeebies if you let it, and Anderson has a knack for horror movies that don’t make you feel ashamed afterwards. If you need a tight script, look elsewhere. But I like this a lot, for a simple reason: It’s genuinely nightmarish.
