Despite some
similarities in marketing art, Francis Ford Coppola’s return to the horror
genre has little of the impact that Dracula
did in the 1990s. Although it is hardly fair to expect the same passion from
the filmmaker as he once had, most infamously filming Apocalypse Now, Coppola’s return to cinema feels as though we are
forced to watch a filmmaker’s career slowly die. While most filmmakers grow in
talent and ability with each film, Coppola seems to be giving us the reverse
with his filmography’s end. It goes without saying that this low-budget
semi-horror film is unable to match up to the Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse
Now (1979) or even Dracula
(1992), but it is much sadder to note that Twixt
is a step down in quality from Tetro
(2009) and Youth Without Youth (2007)
as well.
Val Kilmer stars
as Hall Baltimore, a Stephen King hack with a career that is plummeting.
Searching for someone to care about his latest book in a small town, Hall
discovers a disturbing murder in the town’s history which may be the perfect
subject for his new book. His investigation brings him very casually upon the
ghost of a young girl involved in the tragedy (Elle Fanning) within his dreams,
along with the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe (Ben Chaplin). As he tries to merely steal
from the dead for his book, Hall ends up becoming more entangled in the town’s
mystery than he intended.
The minimized
budget is an understandable explanation for why this film looks so
inconsistent, with Coppola’s recognizable style for the film’s more significant
sequences and other moments looking as though they were shot with a laptop
camera. What is more difficult to understand is how bad the acting is in much
of this film. Shouldn’t budget be insignificant with a veteran filmmaker like
Coppola? Whether it is laziness or just bad direction, some of the film’s
sequences have unbearably performances, and this is all that holds a horror
film without scares or action together.
With an
88-minute running time and endless laughs to be had, both intentional and not,
the only thing this thriller written, produced and directed by Coppola is
missing; thrills. The Blu-ray includes a documentary by Gia Coppola, because
God forbid anyone in that family attempts a career other than director.
Entertainment Value:
4/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 4/10
Historical
Significance: 4/10
Disc Features: 4/10
No comments:
Post a Comment