Vanishing on 7th Street

Directed by Brad Anderson, Vanishing on 7th Street follows four strangers (Hayden Christensen’s Luke, John Leguizamo’s Paul, Thandie Newton’s Rosemary, and Jacob Latimore’s James) as they’re forced to band together after an unknown force essentially abducts every living soul not within sight of a light source. It’s a hell of a premise that proves effective at immediately capturing the viewer’s interest, as Anderson, certainly no stranger to the horror genre, does a superb job of establishing the admittedly unbelievable situation and the four disparate heroes. And although the movie does segue into a disappointingly uninvolving and undeniably stagy stretch set within a bar, Anderson ensures that boredom never quite sets in by periodically emphasizing suspense-oriented sequences that are awfully exciting (eg Luke and Paul, having ventured outside, must escape the encroaching darkness). It’s also clear that the mystery behind what’s happened goes a long way towards keeping things interesting, while the film does grow more and more compelling as the story becomes progressively darker (figuratively speaking, of course). In the end, while it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that Vanishing on 7th Street was originally planned as an episode of the Masters of Horror or Fear Itself anthology series (to which Anderson contributed two installments), the movie comes off as a solid little chiller that admittedly might have benefited from a slightly less vague conclusion.

*** out of ****