Twixt

★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

                Failed writer of witchcraft novels named Hall Baltimore comes to a small American city on his book-signing tour. There he meets a local sheriff and finds out about the mass murder that happened some years ago, one murder that happened recently (or so it seems), the clock with seven faces all showing different times and vampire (or not) kids across the lake. He decides to stay and write a new novel about all of that. Helped in his dreams by Edgar Allan Poe and a dead girl, and haunted by the memories of his deceased daughter, he tries to unravel the mysteries surrounding him and find an ending to his story.

                That's the plot of a low-budget, poorly acted and very dull movie named "Twixt", which looks like a work of an amateur. Does that sound like a Francis Ford Coppola movie to you? Didn't think so. But it is. And I can't help myself asking: "Why?" Trying to find an answer to that question I listened to some interviews with FFC and found out the following. The idea for this movie came to Coppola in a dream after some excessive drinking, or so he says. It makes sense because the movie looks like a dream of a opiate-influenced man. It also seems he shot a lot of material and plans to tour the movie showing it every time a little different and with live music, trying to make a unique experience out of it, similar to watching some theatrical play or going to a concert. That idea is interesting but for it to succeed the movie has to be good, and this one isn't. Maybe because of the scenes that were left out, or just because the script is bad, towards the end it begins to make less and less sense. And when the writer in the movie creates his bullet-proof ending, the one the audience gets is full of holes.

                It's obvious Coppola tries to tackle a lot of things here. Grief, guilt, death, fear of the unknown, the process of writing, the inability to move on (with the story and with the life), artist's inspiration, religious fanaticism, responsibility and probably a few more. And it's a commendable intention. But the feeling is you're watching some kid's work, who has interesting ideas but doesn't know how to make a decent movie out of them, which is very surprising considering Coppola's resume. It's a movie that can make you think, but doesn't give you a reason to. And that's a shame.