Twixt (2011)

Movie Info

Just sharing a drink with Edgar Alan Poe…for some reason

Horror writer Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer) is suffering from writer’s block and touring with his newest book on witches as he recovers from the death of his daughter.  When he finds himself in a small town plagued by death, he is given a story by the local sheriff Bobby LaGrange (Bruce Dern) and finds himself haunted by a strange girl called Virginia (Elle Fanning).  Hall sees there is a story potential in the small town…and the story could give him the story he’s always dreamed of.

Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Twixt is a supernatural thriller.  The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and received mostly negative reviews.  Coppola released a definitive version of the film called B’Twixted Now and Sunrise in 2022.

I saw Twixt when it was relatively new.  A Francis Ford Coppola horror movie intrigued me, and I sought it out.  I was pretty disappointed by Twixt.  The rerelease of B’Twixted Now and Sunrise intrigued me again.  Though the movie was still disappointing, it is an interesting story…and its potential is the most frustrating part of the movie.

Vampire braces are the worst

The story feels like it has a whole bunch of ideas, but it has no clear goal.  The movie is very surreal with Hall’s investigation into the murders and deaths in the small town as something very oblique.  It is a strange town, and it is plagued by death.  The movie dances between a real story and a surreal story.  It ends up very undefined and undeveloped…which instead of making the movie intriguing, it makes the film frustrating.

I am not a big fan of Val Kilmer.  The movie features him with a lot of free range which isn’t necessarily a good thing.  It has him trying to determine his character’s course including a lot of Kilmer’s impersonations of other people including Marlon Brando (which he previously demonstrated in The Island of Dr. Moreau).  Elle Fanning isn’t bad in her small role, and Bruce Dern is always good though he is pretty over-the-top.  The movie features roles for Ben Chaplin as Edgar Alan Poe and Alden Ehrenreich as Flamingo…but they are all let down by the script.  Tom Waits is a nice touch as the narrator, but he can’t add much to the story.

The weird digital imagery sometimes works…and sometimes it doesn’t

The movie has a unique look.  It has a surreal digitized look that is intentional, but it doesn’t always hold up.  It is very stylized and plays with the use of color and black-and-white.  It is meant to play into the quasi-realism of the film, but instead looks kind of cheap and desperate as the film forces interest through the visuals.  The movie just isn’t as good as it could be.

Twixt (and its other iteration B’Twixted Now and Sunrise) still can’t just overcome the final product.  The story and visuals are all there, but it is underdeveloped and the potential isn’t reached.  I think there is a good movie in Twixt, but Twixt isn’t it.  The actors, the story, and especially the director all fail since it didn’t have to happen.  Twixt could have been great, but instead it is just mundane and dull.