Vanishing on 7th Street

[ CITY PAPER GRADE: C- ]

by Sam Adams

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Published: Feb 23, 2011

FREEZE FRAME: John Leguizamo takes a hapless turn as one of a group of survivors in the lackluster horror movie Vanishing on 7th Street.

 

[ CITY PAPER GRADE: c- ]

Horror movies are only as good as the ideas behind them, and the one behind Brad Anderson's Vanishing on 7th Street simply isn't very good. Imagine for a moment that you're afraid of the dark. Now imagine that what you're afraid of isn't what lurks in the shadows but the shadows themselves, which will sneak up on you when the lights aren't on and vanish you away, leaving only a pile of clothes. The fact that succumbing to the movie's spell requires getting the shivers at the sight of a pile of dirty laundry is only the most acute of Vanishing on 7th Street 's problems. Casting the colorless Hayden Christensen as one of a group of survivors holed up in a dimly lit bar surely doesn't help. Nor does giving Thandie Newton a hysterical, and essentially racist, caricature to play, a recovering drug addict whose baby is now just an empty pair of PJs. But the biggest problem is that Anthony Jaswinski's script consigns a bunch of thinly written caricatures to an enclosed space and proceeds to have them blather on at length, obliterating whatever shreds of suspense the film has managed to gin up by that point. John Leguizamo fumbles his way through an underwritten role haplessly, but he wisely manages to excuse himself from some of the more egregious scenes. Anderson is capable of more inspired work: Although it doesn't deserve its cult reputation, his Session 9 is a solid, if occasionally pretentious, thriller. But Vanishing is pure hack work, without a genuine performance or an intriguing idea to be found anywhere. You might think something's hidden in the shadows, but turn up the lights and there's nothing there.