Review: Twixt

by A.J.

If you look at his career as a whole, it appears that Francis Ford Coppola is an indie director that has also just happened to have made some of the most groundbreaking and noteworthy movies of all time. The film he directed prior to The Godfather, was a small scale road movie about a housewife who runs away from her home and husband called The Rain People. Along the way she picks up a brain damaged football player. It’s a movie very much in line with the times (the late 60’s), and also in line some of the smaller movies spread throughout Coppola’s filmography. Some of those films are good, some not so good. The Rain People moves at about the same slow-but-steady pace as The Godfather, but unfortunately has far less interesting subject matter and characters.

Francis Ford Coppola’s success with his vineyard has afforded him the luxury of making the films he wants to make, when he wants to make them, with little or no outside interference. He has made only 3 movies since beginning of this century. Despite the big name behind the camera, each of those films easily qualifies as an “indie film.” The most recent of those is Twixt, his first horror movie since 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Twixt played at film festivals with some sequences in 3-D; outside of those festivals it fell way under the radar. However, Twixt should not be entirely dismissed.

Twixt tells the tale of third rate horror novelist Hall Baltimore, played by Val Kilmer, who, while on a book tour, stops in a small town with a dark past and a recent mysterious murder. The local sheriff, played by Bruce Dern, thinks that the young murder victim (Elle Fanning) is tied into the town’s past, the band of Goth teens that live across the lake, and vampires. He also thinks it’d be a great idea for a book. Hall reluctantly agrees to co-write the book with the sheriff.

I’m a big fan of Coppola’s version of Dracula which was heavy on mood and practical visual effects. Twixt is also heavy on eerie mood and the visual effects, which are no doubt digital, but are used in just the right way at just the right time. The big highlight is the series of dreams Hall has in which he and Edgar Allen Poe discuss the art of crafting a story and Poe reveals to Hall the town’s past. Another highlight is Val Kilmer running through a series of impressions while trying to come up with a first line for his new novel.

Coppola came up with the idea for this movie after he had a dream not unlike the one Kilmer’s character has; and this movie does feel like something someone dreamed up and then threw together over a weekend or two. There is obvious skill and style from the first shot to the last, but unfortunately the story is only as thin as a dream and doesn’t quite live up to the craft put into the film. Nevertheless, Twixt still has enough interesting elements and stunning visuals to make it worth watching late one night.