VANISHING ON 7TH STREET (2010)

My pal Schifty recommends the strangest movies.  If I've never heard of it and he tells me to watch it, then it's a Schifty's Pick.

Well this is unusual.  Schifty recommending a film that was actually released in theaters?  That can't be right.  Hmm...  Well, it was only in six theaters in America.  Wow that's not very wide.  And it was only for four weeks.  Wow that's not very long.  And it only earned 22,917 dollars during that time.  Holy shit.  That's pretty goddamn low, especially for a real studio movie with three headline stars (John Leguizamo, Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton) not to mention a ten million dollar budget and a talented director, Brad Anderson (Session 9, The Machinist).  This movie could have earned more money if instead of making it they just had one guy work at McDonald's for a year.  I hope they didn't blow all that money on something extravagant like a Ford Focus.  Is this movie as bad as its limited release/immense box office failure would suggest?  Nope.  Don't get me wrong, it's not very good.  But it's not infamously shitty or anything.  Just run of the mill 'meh.'

The movie starts in a AMC theater with crowds lined up around the block to see the new movie Vanishing On 7th Street.  No just kidding.  Johnny Legs is a projectionist in an absurdly gigantic projection room reading a book about Roanoke colony and it's mysterious disappearance; then the power goes out and everybody but Johnny Legs vanishes and leaves a pile of their clothes, wigs, hats, glasses, and sometimes even false teeth.  The pitch black mall with little piles of possessions is pretty creepy, but as soon as Johnny Legs finds another survivor and they start with the stilted Shyamalan-esque dialogue the tension is ruined.  The other non-vanished person asks if he's seen anybody else and Johnny Legs awkwardly tells him "I haven't seen a soul" without looking or sounding concerned.

Hayden Christensen shows up eventually as another survivor, probably because his brother Tove Christensen produced the film; his brother also produced the film Shattered Glass which contains the only quality Christensen performance I've seen.  Seriously go watch that instead of this.  The survivors hole up in a bar on the newly sunless planet where people vanish as soon as they set foot outside of the light.  The darkness envelopes anyone unlucky enough to be caught outside the limited artificial lights, like spilled ink soaking through clothes, and nobody knows why.

Sandy Newton references the Rapture but Christensen mocks her concerns as inspired by Left Behind.  Take that, thing that America actually likes.  Earlier in the film, Johnny Legs badmouths Adam Sandler movies, which is kinda funny, because the Left Behind books and Adam Sandler movies are as popular as this movie is not popular.  Adam Sandler would probably be proud if he could make a film that earned so little money.  'Hey guys, check out what I did!'

Johnny Legs offers up his own exhaustive list of theories including for the titular event including "flesh eating bacterias, nanotech run amuck, particle collider accident, parallel universes, neutron bombs, gamma ray bursts, alien abduction, singularities, wormholes, [and] black holes" before being cut off.  I didn't have to hear much of that list to be positive that it would turn out to be none of those things, but I have to give credit to Johnny Legs for brainstorming such a comprehensive list of possibilities instead of doing anything else to ensure his continued survival.

Let me damn the film with some faint praise: it feels like a bad episode of the Twilight Zone blown up to feature length.  That counts as faint praise because I really love the Twilight Zone.  Those are all on instant watch.  Hint hint.

Hi I'm Rod Serling