Vanishing On 7th Street

Harold Camping may have been dead wrong when it came to predicting "the Rapture," however, those that got a kick out of the judgment day predictions may find Brad Anderson's The Vanishing on 7th Street to be just as amusing. Striking in mood and ambiance, yet lacking a coherent plot, Brad Anderson's low-budget post-apocalyptic thriller doesn't waste any time getting the viewer's full attention, instantly hooking the audience by making the entire world (aside from the film's leading survivors) disappear in a blink of an eye in the opening credits. From there on in, the film takes place in Detroit, where a hysterical nurse (Thandie Newton), an AMC theatre projectionist (John Leguizamo), a pompous television reporter (Hayden Christensen) and a grief-stricken boy take refuge in an abandoned bar hoping to find a way to avoid becoming casualties of the darkness. One would think that this ominous, enigmatic premise would be enough to fully entertain viewers, unfortunately other than the CGI shadows in the darkness and the film's eerie blues soundtrack, Vanishing fails to showcase the director's superb skills, which were displayed in Session 9 and Tran Siberian. The film also takes an unneeded preachy turn when the survivors all start questioning their existence and start wondering why they survived; it's clear to the audience that these characters survived because of their light sources, which protected them from the darkness. How Christianity and existentialism became key plot points is beyond me. Nobody needed to see Thandie Newton do her Beloved impersonation again. Despite the fact that the film is quite stylish for a low-budget thriller, the unexplained plot offers more questions than answers, which is infuriating rather than thought provoking. The film's only feature is a Fangoria interview with the director and actor Jacob Latimore. Don't expect any questions to be answered in that interview either.