Vanishing on 7th Street (2010)

Tags

Drama, Hayden Christensen, Horror, Jacob Latimore, John Leguizamo, Movie, Thandie Newton, Vanishing on 7th Street

it's my lightsaber, see? vvvvvvvvmmmm! vvvvrrraaammm! see?

R

Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton, John Leguizamo, Jacob Latimore

Paul: What, am I…in heaven?
Luke: Better…a bar.

During a blackout, most of the population of Detroit disappears in an instant.  Only those close to a light source at the time are spared, but the survivors must stay in the light, or suffer the same fate as all the others.

Affleck, you da bomb in Phantoms, yo!

Yeah, while I was watching this movie, I kept waiting for Ben Affleck’s Sheriff character from Phantoms to show up because this movie borrows heavily from that one.

Both involve a mass disappearance, references to the legendary “Lost Colony” of Roanoke, a group of characters collected in a small building, and some sort of dark presence seemingly trying to absorb them all into a collective.  Also, both movies aren’t particularly good.

Aside from having a title that sounds like an episode of The Twilight Zone, the main problem with Vanishing on 7th Street is the lack of character development (despite some fairly good, if overly dramatic, acting).  I couldn’t help compare that aspect of the movie to the movie I had watched the day before, Cold Weather.  In that movie, we got a whole lot of time to get to know the main characters before the main plot was really set in motion.  Thus, even though their situation wasn’t nearly as dire as the characters’ situation in this movie, the tension was greater because I actually cared about those characters.  I didn’t even know all the names of the people in this movie until quite a ways in.  I’d say Paul (Leguizamo) gets the most development and depth, but Luke (Christensen) and Rosemary (Newton) hardly even register as characters.  They’re just there to run around and try to avoid the dark shadows closing in on them.

Oh, and they threw in a kid or two just so the audience would have to say, “oh no!  They’re not going to kill off the kid, are they!?”  Child endangerment always ramps up the tension.

So, without any real characters to care about, we at least get some sort of interesting explanation as to what the heck is going on, right?

Nope.  A fairly good set up is wasted.

Now, I’m not one that always needs things wrapped up in a pretty bow, but if you’re going to have your movie plot driven instead of character driven, it would be nice to have at least some amount of closure.  In the end I was just left thinking, “I don’t care about these people, and I don’t know what is happening to them.  Why did I watch this?”

There is some creepy imagery here and there and a somewhat ominous mood set at times, if you’re into that sort of thing, but mostly I was just bored.  Frustrated too.  False dramatics bother me.  For instance, they’ve got a ton of independent light sources they’ve been using to stay alive, yet as the bar’s generator is running low on power, they all seem to be saying that if it dies, they die.  So for about 5 to 10 minutes of the movie they’re sitting there praying the generator keeps running and the lights stay on.  All the while, I’m thinking, “um…turn on a flashlight maybe?”

Of course, they remember the flashlights later, when it’s convenient to the plot, but by then I was already rooting for the shadow demon monster creatures to finish them off.  Or for Affleck to save the day…

Hoard batteries.

10 – 3 for booorrrrring characters – 1 for too many frustrating lapses in logic by the characters – .7 because it’s not particularly scary = 5.3

2012 (2009)

Tags

2012, Action, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Drama, John Cusack, Movie, Oliver Platt, Science Fiction, Thandie Newton

I don't have time to argue, we've got yellow dots all over the country! look at the map for cryin' out loud!!

PG-13

John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Danny Glover

Kate: Do you think people change?
Jackson: By “people” you mean me…?
Kate: Yes.  Do you think you’ve changed since we separated?
Jackson: I seem to eat a lot more cereal now…

The Sun hates us, so it’s sending mutant neutrinos into the Earth’s core, causing it to overheat and make the crust unstable.  This causes shifts of the Earth’s plates, resulting in catastrophic earthquakes and such.  Can humanity survive?  Can love survive…?

I’m sure eventually somebody will come up with something even bigger and crazier than this movie, but for now, this film – wherein the Earth basically starts to fall apart right under our feet – will stand as the biggest disaster flick of all time.  I’d guess a large portion of the world’s population is done away with in this one, and we get to see a lot of it.  Earthquakes, floods, tidal waves, geysers, volcanic eruptions…it’s all there.  Also present are many disaster movie cliches.

– There is, of course, a black President.  Though Danny Glover is not playing Barack Obama, despite it being set in the 2010-2012 range.
– Our hero is an every-man, separated from his wife, and doesn’t have a great relationship with his kids (his son calls him Jackson).
– Said hero becomes an action star when required.  He can stunt drive a limo and ramp an RV over a 30 foot wide crack in the ground.
– The president gives a big moving speech.
– There’s some nut-job (Woody Harrelson) who sees all of this destruction coming before everyone else and screams about it for a large portion of the movie.
– Kids in peril.
– There’s an unlikable, slimy, second-tier government official who is constantly at odds with the more heroic lead scientist in the movie.

I’m sure I could go on…but the movie does that for me…for 2 and 1/2 hours.  There were a lot of scenes that I felt could have been cut from this movie to knock it down to a more reasonable 2 hours.  I’m not against longer movies as long as they have enough content to justify the length.

Regardless of all of that, I must admit that it was still reasonably entertaining.  It had a relatively serious tone to it.  I like that it wasn’t winking at the camera every 5 minutes like so many big blockbusters do.  It was more like only every 20 minutes.  Plus, having Cusack in the lead role helped as well.  He makes some of the little comedic moments slightly more believable.

If you’re looking to see a bunch of stuff get blown up and destroyed in various other ways, this is the movie for you.  I doubt anything in it will surprise you, and none of the performances will bowl you over, but at least it won’t bore you too much.  And you better watch it now before…ya know…it’s too late…

Start listening to the doomsday wackos, people!

10 – 1.5 for being overlong due to extraneous scenes – 2.2 for too many cliches = 6.3