Twixt is odd. Sometimes odd can be good, like Inception, and sometimes it can be incredible like Memento. However, it can go drastically, horribly wrong. When this happen odd describes something that is plot-less, confusing, dull, shallow, and ultimately not enjoyable. Twixt is that sort of odd. It’s such a great example of that sort of odd that possibly we should start using the phrase “that film was rather Twixt”. In fact, let’s start using it now. Twixt is Twixt.
The film follows struggling author Hall Baltimore (a very large, un-Ice Man Val Kilmer) as he stops off at every small town in America promoting his latest forgettable horror story. On the tour he meets the town sheriff Bobby LeGrange who wants Hall to join him in writing a book based on a recent unsolved murder. After agreeing Hall is visited in his dreams by a strange girl called V (Elle Fanning). From this point on the story only gets weirder with the introduction of unnecessary characters, clear red herrings and a clichéd final scene.
It’s not only the final scene that is clichéd, but most of the film. The down and out author whose career has declined since his daughter died is an unoriginal lead. The narration at the start is both obvious (a deep voiced male) and over the top. The setting is an off-the-map small town in the outback of America. The sheriff is clearly a bit odd (twixt). All these things tick the boxes of obvious kooky horror, but that makes it both unkooky and not scary.
An odd (twixt) and not altogether plot can be excused if the film is a joy to see. Robin William’s What Dreams May Come was very odd, but looks incredible. Sadly Twixt is not What Dream May Come. The set looks cheap with the cinematography coming off cartoonish and ugly. This is not at all what you’d expect from a film with $7 million budget. The fact it only returned $368,086 is bigger warning than this review.
Normally you could just chalk this one up to someone’s miscalculated first time and see it as a film they can learn from. What’s the most
disappointing is that this isn’t a first-time director’s film, but one by Francis Ford Coppola. The man who brought us The Godfather wrote a screenplay, produced and directed something that belongs in a high school
film club.
To be fair there were some funny moments, implying that the film isn’t taking itself too seriously. But if that is the case, then it needed to be done much more obviously.
Overall this is a DVD that should be removed from any Francis Ford Coppola box set and instantly thrown away.