Vanishing on 7th Street: Movie Review

"The end times are coming" - the phrase has been said countless times over the centuries. Man has this great obsession with his final days and honestly, it is a pretty weird and obscure obsession. "Vanishing on 7th Street" is banking on that self-destructive fixation. But for us, what really caught our attention is the decision not to feature aliens, demons and mother nature as the culprits to man's apocalypse. Read on to find out our verdict for "Vanishing on 7th Street" and know if the out-of-the-ordinary antagonists were effective or not.

When a global blackout occurs, almost everyone on the planet simply vanishes out of thin air. The only thing they leave behind are their clothes and possessions. Mysterious shadow figures are capturing those that are left behind. The shadows seem to be afraid of light. As the sun is rising later and setting earlier each passing day, four people are forced to converge in a bar on Detroit's 7th Street as it is the only place in the city with electricity and most importantly, numerous light sources. As the four comes to grips that the generator won't run forever, they try to devise ways on how they can escape the battered city and hopefully run away from the deadly shadows.

"Vanishing on 7th Street" had great potential to be one of the more interesting post-apocalyptic films to date. Unfortunately, all it does is alienate its viewers with a style that leaves you hanging countless times. Sadly, it never tries to explain what really is happening and the ending really shoved that point in our faces. Actually, we have no qualms with "Vanishing on 7th Street" except for its lackluster narrative style. Actors playing on-screen were great, except for John Leguizamo. For us, he was just forcing it too much. The shadows were a big surprise - with aliens, demons and even mother nature ruling apocalyptic films, the shadow concept was a big sigh of relief (although these shadow forces never really terrified us). What really blew it apart was plot development. The movie feeds you the different lives of the four people involved - who they lost in the blackout and why they live on and yet, nothing really happens to those stories beyond presenting them the first time around. What we hated about "Vanishing on 7th Street" is having that nagging feeling that it played a trick on us. It actually made us feel that we wasted our time watching it - and that is never really a good feeling to get when the credits start rolling. "Vanishing on 7th Street" never really accomplished anything more so give substance and meaning to what we saw on screen. It had a one-of-a-kind idea going for it and it failed to bank on it.

Rating: 2 reels





Why you should watch it:
- the shadows are a sigh of relief

Why you shouldn't watch it:
- even though the basic plot is interesting, the movie never expounds or explains anything further
- the film feels like a pilot episode to a television show. Too bad that it won't have any other episodes to further develop the story and characters