Twixt (2011)

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Day 174 of Sobriety.  
 
So, this one really has me scratching my head—I just don’t know what to make of Twixt at all. It's a 2011 film written, directed, and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. It features a few big names, notably (for me) Val Kilmer in the lead role and Tom Waits providing some voice-over narration. But, confoundingly, given its credentials, it’s pretty damned awful. 
 
Its Stephen King-esque plot revolves around a struggling (alcoholic) horror writer who visits a small US town on a book signing tour and discovers that the town has a strange dark secret involving child murderers and ghosts. 
 
On paper, this should have been great, but watching it, it's actually hard to believe that it was really made by the director responsible for towering classics like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. It seems to have been shot very cheaply on video. It looks completely flat, the music is uninspired, the frequent dream sequences look like a self-produced promo video by a failed 1980s new romantic goth band, and the performances are phoned in at best or painfully amateurish at worst. 
 
I just don’t get it. How can this be, considering the people involved? I feel like there is a part of the puzzle that I am not privy to—like it was done as a joke, or shot in a week as a favor for a friend…or something. I don’t know… I’m just confused. 
 
There is the germ of an interesting story in there: an alcoholic writer struggling with his addiction, his work, and most of all struggling with guilt over the accidental death of his daughter—an accident that he feels he could have prevented had he not been in the throes of alcoholism, who uncovers a strange dark secret in a small town that provides him with a surprising path to redemption... That sounds like a film that I want to see! But the actual movie is so sadly lacking in almost every aspect that none of that potential is realized. I dunno, the film seems to have some fans—and good for them—but I'm not one of them!

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