"THE FOG ROLLED IN OVER THE LAKE..."
Sorry, I just HAD to start with that. If you've seen the movie, you'll know why. The has to be the weirdest viewing experience I've had so far this year! I never saw the original version entitled "TWIXT" in 2011 which most critics lambasted while Cahiers du Cinema simultaneously named it one of the best film of the year. I only watched the brand new "Authorized Version" Francis Ford Coppola released last month. So naturally I cannot speak to whatever differences there are between the two versions. However, THIS 2022 version wow-ed me in the oddest manner and has sat with me since I saw it days ago! I can see why people in 2011 (and those watching the new version now in 2023) either love it or (more probably) hate it. Especially with the almost violently abrupt ending! At first, when I realized the movie was over, I had a momentary knee-jerk "NO!!!!" reaction but seconds later I changed my mind and thought it was right for some reason totally unknown to me. If this is all very confusing, it's appropriate for a mystifying film which was based on a spooky dream Coppola had. The director recorded his recollections of the strange dream into a tape recorder immediately upon awaking and the dreamlike logic is expertly ported over into the film. Besides Coppola's dream, the director also works through the grief and trauma of the death of his son Gian-Carlo in that bizarre boating accident! Grief and dream-logic are the two main themes in this movie and keeping those two concepts in your mind will hopefully make the viewing of this film ring true.
Val Kilmer plays lower-grade horror fiction writer Hall Baltimore who has arrived in a small
town during a book signing tour. The town doesn't have an 'actual' bookstore so Baltimore sets up the best he can. The town DOES have a 7-sided clock tower/belfry which is infamous for having 7 clock faces each telling a different time! Not a single person comes to see Baltimore at his book signing -- until Sheriff Bobby LaGrange drops in on the author to get a book signed but also to ask Baltimore if he'd like to collaborate with the Sheriff on a book about the local murder spree! In the morgue is a dead woman with a large wooden stick stuck in her chest. This seems to be the serial killer's trademark. Or, more to LaGrange's thinking, they're vampires. The Sheriff wants to collaborate with Baltimore on a book entitled "The Vampire Executions". LaGrange also has a big sign in front of his house that reads "GOT BATS?" because he has a sideline in building bat houses (birdhouses but for bats)! Hall Baltimore is desperately in need of money as well as a 'bulletproof' idea for a new book which will make him a best-selling author once again. Especially since his wife (hilariously played by Kilmer's actual former wife Joanne Whalley!!!) is threatening to do something terrible to his first edition of Walt Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS unless he comes up with a book advance PDQ! Baltimore is also an alcoholic who is still grieving at the death of his young daughter (which is revealed to be in exactly the same type of accident which killed Coppola's son Gian-Carlo). The town also is known for an old, abandoned hotel in which Edgar Allan Poe once slept.
While out walking in the night, Baltimore encounters the boarded-up hotel as well as a pale 12 year old girl (looking rather goth) named Virginia or V. as she prefers to be called (beautifully played by Elle Fanning). She says she is teased by the other girls who call her 'Vampira' because of her braces-enmeshed teeth. Coming back to the abandoned hotel, it is suddenly lit up and open for business. V. refuses to go inside but Baltimore goes in (at the proprietoress's invitation) for a beer and possibly something to eat. All this is shot in a wonderful, atmospheric, dreamlike way which brings to mind Coppola's baroque BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA. Amongst all this spookiness there is also the fact that, in the past, 12 children were murdered in this very same hotel by Pastor Allan Floyd and are all still buried underneath the stone floor in the dining room! Oh yes, and there are a bunch of 'evil' Satan worshippers down by the river led by one Flamingo (played nicely by Alden Ehrenreich) who are probably vampires. And I can't forget the fact that Hall Baltimore is visited by a ghostly Edgar Allan Poe himself (spokily evoked by Ben Chaplin). I'm sure there are dozens of other details I'm leaving out (including the dead woman in the morgue communicating with Baltimore and the Sheriff through a Ouija board) but this film is loaded with spooky treats.
But fair warning, this is not your ordinary movie! Coppola mixes hilarious comedy with intense emotion focusing on grief, death and coping with both. While there is a very definite story/plot, it is wound up in bizarre dream logic of the flavour of a Lucio Fulci 'Gates of Hell' movie. This is a meditation wearing the cloak of a horror movie. Your tolerance for such things will directly influence how you respond to this film. The cast (yes, even Val Kilmer) is top notch and all seem to 'get' what Coppola is going for here. Val Kilmer's 'breakdown' scene in which he probably ad-libbed some celebrity impressions (including his co-star Marlon Brando from DR. MOREAU) I found to be quite funny (while others seem to hate it). Bruce Dern, as always, is a welcome presence and his goofy Sheriff Bobby LaGrange hits all the comedy without overselling it. As I already stated, the fact that Kilmer's ex-wife Joanne Whalley plays his character's estranged and hostile wife Denise is absolutely inspired casting! Ben Chaplin looks uncannily like Poe and Elle Fanning is suitably haunting as V. So if straightforward movies are your thing, B'TWIXT is probably not for you. But if you're open to tons of atmosphere, the working through of grief and dream-logic, you might like to give this movie a try.
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