Twixt (2022)

In Twixt, a "bargain-basement Stephen King" writer (Val Kilmer) visits a small town on a going-nowhere book tour only to find himself very much a part of a real mystery containing a haunted belfry, ghosts of dead children, and a corpse with a stake through its heart. It's a movie chock full of atmosphere and unease, and it's really well done. Good movie for this time of year.Kilmer plays Hall Baltimore. He drinks a lot. I mean a lot. At a quiet book signing, the local sheriff Bobby Lagrange (played with absolute zeal by Bruce Dern) slyly mentions that he himself is a bit of a writer and would Mr. Baltimore care to collaborate? Why, Sheriff Bobby even has a story all ready to go. Has to do with missing and/or murdered kids, or maybe the aforementioned belfry (it's haunted!) and probably everything to do with those kids who live across the lake, the ones who look like they practice Satanism or some such.Meanwhile, Baltimore has money woes. His wife (played by Kilmer's real-life ex, Joanne Whalley) pressures him to get another advance from his publisher (David Paymer) so that she can pay off their mounting debt, even threatening to sell his priceless copy of Whitman's Leaves of Grass. This is kind of what gets Baltimore to agree to a sort of collaboration with the sheriff.One night, Baltimore has one heck of a dream. He wanders through a forest, where he is joined by an ethereal girl in braces (Elle Fanning). They converse, and their path leads them to an old hotel - one that's not open when Baltimore is awake. The girl refuses to go in; Baltimore does, and he learns some things about missing children and the secrets of the town. He wakes up. But was it a dream? Coppola strikes just the right tone with this movie, and the casting is superlative. Kilmer is fine - perhaps even better than usual - and Dern is terrific. Love that guy. Alden Ehrenreich (the new Han Solo, plus the guy from Beautiful Creatures) and Don Novello (yes, Father Guido Sarducci from SNL) are both a real treat. The ending both comes out of nowhere and makes all the sense in the world, just the kind of ending you want in a horror thriller.

Francis Coppola comes nearly full circle in his career with this embarrassing, juvenile horror pastiche, analogous to porn-parody in its mainstream pastiche of the genre. After breaking into show biz with soft porn, he first garnered attention 50 years ago with "Dementia 13" for Roger Corman, and unlike Corman's classic Poe adaptations of that era, Coppola's Poe pastiche here is terrible.Main failing is a complete lack of self-awareness, which often besets artists full of themselves. As indicated in the dreadful "Making of" short subject directed by his grand-daughter Gia, Francis is caught up in the craft of filmmaking, including dabbling with that ever-trendy (and pointless) gimmick 3-D, oblivious to the silliness of his script and the lousy scenes printed. Clearly living in the past of his successes, married with an ill-advised affinity for independent (and amateurish) modern filmmaking, he seems to lack the necessary self- criticism that helped him fashion classic work 40 years back.Similarly, his lead Val Kilmer is also a has-been, content with underplaying most scenes and overacting crucial emotional ones, when not indulging in idiotic impressions (the Kevin Spacey syndrome), as when egged on by Coppola to "do Mark Twain". Apparently both star and director expect to earn brownie points for not caring one whit whether they make fools of themselves.Early in the film I sensed a promising return to a type of fantasy and horror that once gave birth to the seminal classic "Lemora" starring Rainbeaux Smith, beloved by connoisseurs if not the general public. Its director Richard Blackburn was a one-hit wonder, or perhaps less since this was not a hit but more of a cult classic.But to paraphrase Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, as applied not to Dan Quayle in the political arena, but to leading lady Elle Fanning, "You're no Rainbeaux Smith". A talented young actress, Fanning is a dead space on screen here in the crucial part of the mysterious undead girl who lures Val into the story. Besides soft porn roots, Coppola in the '80s was famously a hanger-on to the Adult industry, attending annual AVN awards dinners and hob-nobbing with sexy XXX starlets. Had he chosen porn rather than horror for this 2011 backsliding exercise, he could have cast the perfect young beauty Elsa Jean or even fulfilled by dream of giving current jail-bait superstar Piper Perri a chance to show her acting chops in Elle's role.Storyline of has-been, bargain-basement Stephen King horror writer Val (character name: Hall) ordered by his publisher to come up with a "bulletproof" ending for his new novel, or else, it was sad to see how perfunctory and dissatisfying an ending triple-threat Coppola concocted for this movie. The tongue-in-cheek performances (especially by Bruce Dern as sheriff and transparent bad guy, another Corman graduate) and series of stupid scenes included a rather lame in-joke of Val's nasty and venal wife played by his real wife Joanne Whalley (ex hyphenate Kilmer in her stage name). I would have preferred Nastassja Kinski doing a snake dance. Similarly, the handling of the red-herring goth cult of youngsters dangled for us was pure cliché and even less believable than such filler as presented in '60s softcore movies.The acid test for this junker is how it would have been greeted had it not borne the prestigious Coppola name in its credits. Perhaps critics and audiences would have felt sorry for an unknown filmmaker breaking in with a failed but technically adept genre piece. But for an all-time great wasting his time and intelligence on such crap -unforgivable.

Hall Baltimore (Kilmer) is a third rate horror novelist who is on a book tour of his latest novel. The tour takes him to Swann Valley in which the local hardware store doubles for the town's bookstore. He is approached by the crazy Sheriff Bobby LaGrange (Dern) who has an idea for a book and wants Baltimore's help. Eventually Baltimore agrees to meet the Sheriff at the morgue where he is shown the body of a victim of a serial killer who died with s stake in her heart. Baltimore and LaGrange collaborate on the book as the history of the dead girl known as V. (Fanning) is revealed through dreams Baltimore has and dreams that have him talking to Edgar Allen Poe (Ben Chaplin) himself. This troubled movie tries for a Gothic tone sprinkled with modern elements and pulls neither off. The script is far more confusing and incredibly disjointed. Val Kilmer sleepwalks through the lead role and other fine character actors are wasted in this film that just never connects at any level with the audience. How can one of the great American Directors of all time, Francis Ford Coppola be responsible for this non-scary and weak excuse for a horror film? I don't know but he is. You'll forget it while you're watching it.

I feel like this movie was filmed on the first draft of a script. There were good ideas and an interesting overall plot, but...it was just too disconnected to make a great movie - or even a good movie.Val Kilmer did a good job in this role, as did Bruce Dern. The rest of the cast did just fine as well.The special effects had that sort of artsy feel to them - which is short-hand for low budget but dressed up in a creative way.Anyway, the plot consists of Kilmer's character on a book-signing tour. His character is a drunk and his home life is in turmoil. Dern approaches him with an idea for a new story involving death, vampires, and a a few other interesting tidbits. After that, the movie takes a turn for the worse. Long confusing dream sequences interspersed between odd directions in the plot...The introduction of a convincing Edgar Allen Poe as a dream guide was cool, but everything else was just too weird. I know it was trying to be clever and artsy, but it failed to do even that.The ending was just a mess that made no sense. Unless you don't have anything else to watch, just pass on this movie.