hal-reg
If you like your films to come with a plot written out in large crayon letters then this isn't for you. It is twisted and deliberately confusing - though not so much you can't see what is going on if you pay attention. It is more intriguing than creepy, and I thought a good evocation of the atmosphere and experience it was trying to capture (an experience which most films miserably fail to achieve). Val Kilmer plays his part very well. I felt rather sorry for Joanne Whalley - an important bit part in the story, but not really present in person (one step up from an off-stage voice). It's the sort of film where you wonder afterwards if the bits you thought were straightforward were actually references and metaphors. The weakest part of the story was the group of young Goths/neo-pagan camped out on the far side of the lake. Although they were a necessary plot device, and foil to the complacent contentment of the town, they seem rather 2-dimensional.
Leofwine_draca
Wow. It's hard to believe that Francis Ford Coppola (THE GODFATHER) would put his name to this travesty. It's a shot-on-video, zero budget piece of nonsense featuring a chubby Val Kilmer playing a horror writer who visits a creepy small town to work on his latest novel. While there he encounters the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe (yep), alongside a creepy vampire kid and lots of bizarre townsfolk. Is what's going on all in his head, or is there something more disturbing about the town? As another viewer noted, TWIXT looks like one of those cheap, live-action horror video games made in the 1990s, like PHANTASMAGORIA, except worse. The whole blue-tinted look of the movie is a mess and the storyline is even worse. It seems Coppola made this as an experimental film but the experiment is a complete failure. The only interesting thing is that Joanne Whalley turns up playing Kilmer's ex-wife as an in-joke (she's Kilmer's ex in real life). Kilmer seems embarrassed by the whole thing and rightly so. Bruce Dern cameos as the town sheriff and the reliable Ben Chaplin plays Poe, but for most of the running time we're stuck with one of those annoying Fanning kids. For shame, Coppola...
culmo80
I feel like this movie was filmed on the first draft of a script. There were good ideas and an interesting overall plot, but...it was just too disconnected to make a great movie - or even a good movie.Val Kilmer did a good job in this role, as did Bruce Dern. The rest of the cast did just fine as well.The special effects had that sort of artsy feel to them - which is short-hand for low budget but dressed up in a creative way.Anyway, the plot consists of Kilmer's character on a book-signing tour. His character is a drunk and his home life is in turmoil. Dern approaches him with an idea for a new story involving death, vampires, and a a few other interesting tidbits. After that, the movie takes a turn for the worse. Long confusing dream sequences interspersed between odd directions in the plot...The introduction of a convincing Edgar Allen Poe as a dream guide was cool, but everything else was just too weird. I know it was trying to be clever and artsy, but it failed to do even that.The ending was just a mess that made no sense. Unless you don't have anything else to watch, just pass on this movie.
Bob_the_Hobo
Aging writer Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer) visits the small New England town of while on an unpopulated book tour. The local Sheriff (Bruce Dern) informs Baltimore of a possible serial murder in town, trapping Baltimore in a dream-state where he digs up the town's past and its connection to a haunted hotel and Edgar Allen Poe. Some scenes in "Twixt" are imaginative and enthralling, while others are uninspired and bland. Half of the movie has the audience on the edge of their seats, and the rest has them checking their watches. Val Kilmer's performance is bizarre. When he's in the film's reality, he's mailing it in. But when he's in the film's dream-state, he's captivating. Perhaps that is the point. A particularly cooky performance from Bruce Dern kept me watching. But Elle Fanning does the best acting in the film, even though she's not in it much. Probably the weirdest part of the film is the soundtrack. It goes from sad piano solo to Blue Man group in the same scene, and as a result much of the tone trying to be established is either done badly or just gone. Overall, a pretty uninteresting but watchable movie for its weirdness. It's worth trying out, but if your attention isn't grabbed in the first half hour, it's worth seeing what else is on.
AD
