Sh! I Can't Hear In the Dark!

The last time I took a chance on an early '90s sultry thriller airing on HBO my reward was Faye Dunaway shouting "cookies!" in Tom Holland's The Temp. Twas a glorious day.

With that in mind, I went back to the cable well for 1992's Whispers In the Dark. 

Let's just say we can't all be winners.

Quick Plot: We open on blurry lovemaking, which is basically a bunch of pinkish shapes melding into each other like the finale of Society. Instead of butthead jokes and face melting, we simply get Annabella Sciorra as Ann awaking from a dream and heading to her office, where she gets hit on by Jamey Sheridan, provides counseling to a very well-dressed John Leguizamo, and hears the sexual exploits of Debra Kara Unger's Eve.

Sheridan is Doug, a nice guy pilot eager to whisk the workaholic Ann off her sensibly shoe'd feet.Their first plane ride date culminates in that kind of instrumentally scored sex scene the '90s loved, with Ann declaring Doug "the gentlest man she's ever met".

This being an early '90s sexytime thriller, Doug is more than meets the eye. We're less than 20 minutes in when Ann discovers the mystery man from Eve's detailed stories is none other than her new squeeze. Eve reacts with fury, stealing some of Ann's files before hanging herself...allegedly.

Enter Anthony "Whatever Nationality You Need" LaPaglia as brash detective Morgenstern, a man with a very specific hatred of the psychiatric profession. The suspect list begins to mount as Morgenstern interrogates everyone around Ann, including her mentor/pal/therapist Alan Alda.

Checkhov's Law of Name Actors In Small Parts should answer a lot of your questions, but Whispers In the Dark doesn't seem to have the best handle on how to ask them in the first place. Sciorra is fine in the lead, but writer/director Christopher Crowe (penner of 1996's roller coaster game changer Fear) doesn't really have a great handle on how to put the steam in what's supposed to be an erotic thriller. He gets a lot of help from the always-reliable-to-ooze-sensuality Unger, but her character's gone too soon, leaving us instead with such riveting scenes as Ann hanging out with Doug's conservative Iowan mom as she drives around town to show off the local bank.

Basic Instinct, this ain't. Heck, Whispers In the Dark makes Body of Evidence and Sliver look like bonafide classics, and trust me: that's not easy. 

High Points

If you make it through Whispers In the Dark long enough, you will ultimately be rewarded with one of the more bonkers endings of the '90s involving a beachfront confrontation that culminates in a hook to the face of a beloved sweater-clad character actor, so there's that?

Low Points

A goofy erotic thriller that's neither sexy nor fun is a bland, bland thing to behold

Lessons Learned

Being a detective might be considered low, working class, and unjewish

When hiding evidence, consider a place slightly less exposed than the living room shelf

Nothing says "not guilty" like hogtying up your therapist

'90s era police glass was incredibly breakable

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, I love the stupid subgenre that is the sexy '90s thriller, but there are dozens of better choices out there. Watch one of those instead.

Can You Tell Me How to Vanish On Boring Street?

You know when you REALLY want a movie to be great? The director excites you, the premise is up your alley, and the fact that it’s streaming on Netflix just seems like kismet. At a certain point, it’s like the film has to work to NOT be exactly what you want.

Vanishing on 7th Street works awfully hard.

Awfully.

Quick Plot: It’s a typical day in Detroit when the city pulls a Left Behind style blackout that leaves nothing but a lot of clothing and a few stray survivors hanging out in darkness, where only the beam of flashlights will stave off a herd of shadowy figures. Among the living are Paul (John Lequizamo), a film projectionist with a history hobby, Rosemary (Thandie Newton), a physical therapist looking for her baby (and probably named Rosemary for the sole reason of letting reviewers write “Rosemary’s baby”), James (Jacob Latimore), a 12-year-old waiting for his bartender mom, and the offensively named Luke (Hayden “I Hate Sand” Christensen), a field reporter.

The motley crew holds up in a local tavern called Sonny’s (ha ha) fully lit by a backup generator. As the lights begin to dim and their power supply starts to die, Luke convinces the rest to make a break for it by jump starting a nearby truck. 

Jump starting nearby trucks is so very easy on camera.

To go further into the plot might lead to spoilage, except--

SPOILER ALERT--

There’s nothing to spoil because we never ACTUALLY find out anything about anything...anything...about...anything.

Why did most humans vanish? Why weren’t French poodles and squirrels taken? Is there somewhere these things GO? Why DID that Chevy still run, and was it JUST because it was a Chevy? Why was Paul taken into the ether and spit back a few days later? How in The Happening does THAT make sense? Is it aliens? God? Demons? Pulse-ish shadows from another dimension? Hot dogs? Betty Buckley?

GIVE ME SOMETHING!

Sigh. Not every film needs to give us every answer. Is The Shining about ghosts, alcoholism, or Native American genocide? It doesn’t matter if the film is good enough to justify the lack of answers.

Vanishing on 7th Street, however, is not. Anderson creates some excellent spookiness right from the outset, including one of the most effective jump scares I’ve seen in some time within its first ten minutes. The mystery is haunting enough to keep us on edge, but when NOTHING stands behind it, how can an audience possibly be expected to stay on board? Anthony Jaswinski’s script gives us dull squabbling and zero answers, and even though some of the performances do what they can to sell it--okay, really just Lequizamo and the young Latimore, as Newton comes off shrill and Anakin is still Anakin--the movie ultimately feels like a stretched out short story that never had a good ending to begin with.

High Points

It’s probably impossible for a lifelong Star Wars fan to ever get behind Hayden Christensen again, but young actor Jacob Latimore brings a fantastic presence to his role as James. If only he had played Anakin Skywalker...

Fellow history nerds rejoice! Anybody else always intrigued by the mystery of the Roanoke settlement’s disappearance? Let’s see a better film about that

Low Points

Considering Brad Anderson’s past work, I was weirdly disappointed with some of the overbearing soundtrack work in Vanishing on 7th Street. While the jukebox choices had a hauntingly retro feel, some of the scoring was just too much and broke the eerie subtlety of the film’s major mysteries

We learn quite early on that once you’re covered in darkness, you’ll be swooped away (even though WE NEVER KNOW WHERE TO). So how frustrating is it that at a key moment, two of our main characters are being closed in upon by the shadows only to...um, escape and keep freaking out. Way to break the rules and therefore lessen the tension of anything that comes after

Lessons Learned

Never underestimate the importance of glow sticks. Never.

Jukeboxes use an awful lot of power

Try to avoid going to the theaters to see Adam Sandler movies because really, is THAT where you want to be during the rapture?

Rent/Bury/Buy

I’m trying to avoid using the word ‘frustrating’ anymore in this review. It’s not particularly a google keyword I’m looking to catch, but holy Kirk Cameron can I not think of a better adjective to describe Vanishing on 7th Street. The potential is there, and yet the insane coyness of the script seems to dare its audience to give up. At the same time, Brad Anderson continues to show plenty of strength when it comes to building tension, and hey, some of us just love a good rapture. I’m being quite negative on the film because GRRRRR does it make me say GRRRRR, but the premise itself might still be enough to at least give it an Instant Watch try if you like these kinds of things. Just prepare to be ...

(Pause to check thesaurus)

Stymied! Yeah, that’s it...