Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to intro a review by Supergirl, who is crusading around Toronto as one of the many AICN stringers attending the fest. She saw the new Brad Anderson (Session 9, The Machinist) thriller at the fest, part of the great Midnight Madness run of genre films. I'm not a particularly huge fan of Hayden Christensen, but I love Anderson. The word out of the screening seems to be majorly positive with Supergirl's being the most reserved of what I've seen from other critics. Here's her thoughts! Enjoy!
Hey Harry, back with another review. Per the talkbackers I'm a studio flack and/or a lesbian. Good for me. Let's see what they make of this one. Brad Anderson's VANISHING ON 7TH STREET premiered at Midnight Madness at TIFF tonight. Anderson was here six years ago with THE MACHINIST, so obviously, a lot of interest in his repeat performance. VANISHING is essentially a dressed-up retake on LEFT BEHIND mixed with a TWILIGHT ZONE episode. Literally a Twilight Zone in this case since the entire film takes place in an actual twilight zone, after a handful of people awake to a world where a) all the other people are gone, leaving only their clothes, and b) darkness is everywhere. Oh: and that darkness is coming for them, too. Is it the Rapture? A subspace inversion? The Architect hitting the "off" switch on the Matrix? Who knows. Each of the characters interprets the jeopardy, and meaning, of their situation differently, and this thing out-Losts LOST for not providing definitive answers - although the "go into the light" stuff from the last episode of that show does, tangentially, apply. The director of photography must be some wonderful kind of batshit nuts for exposing his film (or digital motion picture chip) this way. This isn't the inky blackness of a Gordon Willis; rather, the film is painted in extraordinarily dark hues of charcoal, navy, slate, etc., with occasional day-glow bursts of honey-coloured light. VANISHING is an amazingly dark picture, with a distinct visual signature. After a lot of "more of the same" in scary movies, this is a real treat, and Anderson milks it for all it's worth. True story: one of the ways I know I'm having a nightmare is that none of the lights turn on all the way. This movie heftily reminded me of that. The survivors are played by Hayden Christensen, John Leguizamo, Thandie Newton, and young Jacob Latimore as 12-year-old James. The kid's great, and Leguizamo and Newton are always great, so no surprises there. I can take or leave Christensen, but he's got some pretty solid scenes here. He's also playing the atheist of the group, so he wins my allegiance. My chief qualm is the ending, or lack of same; the makers need to watch THE PRESTIGE again - i.e. we have a pledge and a turn here, but no prestige. (Quoth Michael Caine: it's not enough to make a bird disappear. You have to bring it back.) Instead VANISHING offers a big donut hole of a metaphysical question, which is not particularly objectionable in its own right, but leads to an unsatisfying ending. The film was warmly received by the crowd at the Ryerson. Your boy Copernicus was in the house and asked Anderson a question about dark matter and its relationship to the story, which Anderson sort of waffled on - though I suspect Copernicus would have been happy to debate the matter till the sun came up. - Supergirl
