Twixt

Released by: Fox
Released on: July 23, 2013.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Val Kilmer, Elle Fanning, Bruce Dern, Ben ChaplinYear: 2011
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The Movie:

In 2011, Francis Ford Coppola decided he wanted to make a low budget horror movie so he used some of his own money and set out to do just that. He shot it digitally to keep costs down and to allow for easy post-production tinkering and he did it without any major studio interference. The end result was Twixt and it's now been released domestically on Blu-ray through Fox.

Val Kilmer headlines as an author named Hall Baltimore. He was once at the top of his game but years of heavy drinking and hard living have seen his career slide a bit these days. To promote his latest book he attends a signing in a small town and, like every small town in every movie ever made, it has a dark past - kids have been murdered. After arriving, one of those kids appears to him in the form of a female ghost named V (Elle Fanning) which spurns him to investigate. This is not a completely selfless act, however, as he sees in this story the making of his next book and hopefully a career comeback.

As he starts poking around in the town's history, strange things start occurring. Not only is V wandering around communicating with him but so too is the ghost of a certain man who calls himself Poe (Ben Chaplin). As he and the town's sheriff (Bruce Dern) try to figure out what's going on, the story of the town's past begins to mix with Baltimore's own life in some strange and eerie ways.

You've got to admire Coppola at this stage in his career. He's done his time, paid his dues and carved out his well-deserved place in movie history and so it's interesting to see him basically 'go indy' on us with a bizarre project like Twixt. It's a shame then that the movie wasn't better. While it's not the complete disaster some would make it out to be, the movie starts off strong but quickly becomes so absorbed with its own visuals that the story splinters and never quite recovers. Sure, the picture is always pretty to look at but after we voyage into the film's black and white (and red) nightmarescape once, heading back for repeat visits quickly becomes old hat and frankly quite unnecessary. As such, what begins as interesting to look at soon becomes repetitive and overused.

Where the movie succeeds, however, is with the performances. Elle Fanning does have some nice ghostly presence here and is well cast as the mysterious V. She looks fantastic all made up in her spectral garb and she has enough of an otherworldly vibe to her that she really does a great job on the part. Bruce Dern isn't really breaking any new ground here but he's fun in his supporting role while Ben Chaplin does a decent Poe and he looks the part as well. The biggest surprise, however, is Val Kilmer. No longer the marquee draw that he once was it's hard not to notice that he's no longer the cut young man who brought Jim Morrison to the big screen but that hardly matters here, in fact, it works in the movie's favor. He's believable as an over the hill alcoholic writer no longer at the top of the heap, and he does the role justice without ever going too over the top.

So yeah, there are parts of this movie that work, a few that even work really well, but the plot and the self-absorbed repetition of certain visual tricks eventually sink the movie once we get past the initial setup (which is admittedly well done). Coppola is making movies for himself at this point, and no one can really blame him for that. It's just a shame that this time around he let the flaws in the plot get in the way of some slick visuals and solid performances.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Twixt arrives on Blu-ray framed at 2.00.1 in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer that presumably looks just as it should. Coppola shot this digitally and then went nuts in post-production, applying all manner of filtering and color tweaking to get his desired look. If you appreciate what he's done here - the sapping of color, the black and white tweaking with occasional hints of red, the intentional softness - then it's hard to argue with the picture quality here, but the opposite also rings true: if you're not impressed by the incessant digital tinkering, this won't change your mind. To the credit of the disc, the image is sharp when it is supposed to be and shows natural looking color reproduction when the story calls for it. The black and white (and red) sequences look hokey, forced and fake but that's no fault of the Blu-ray. This feels like an accurate representation of some weird looking source material. Contrast and compression issues are never a problem and black levels are excellent.

The only audio option provided is an English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track with optional subtitles provided in English and Spanish. Audio quality is pretty solid here. The track doesn't give your surround system the work out you might want but the rears are used well in some of the more active scenes and even in the calmer moments you can pick up on some intentional atmospheric effects. Dialogue comes almost entirely out of the front but it's crisp and clear. No problems here, the levels are nicely balanced and the mix is clean.

Extras are slim but we do get a thirty-eight minute documentary on the making of the movie shot by Coppola's granddaughter Gia Coppola. It's made up almost entirely of footage shot during the production of the movie and isn't presented with a whole lot of context, sadly. If BTS footage is your thing though, check it out - a few comments from the director make it worth skimming through. Aside from that we get some previews for other Fox titles, menus and chapter selection.

The Final Word:

Twixt never quite works the way you want it to. There are interesting moments here, some atmosphere, a fun story and a surprisingly good performance from a noticeably chubby Kilmer, but by the time it's all over and done with it's too scattered and so caught up in its own bizarre style that it winds up too disjointed for its own good. Fox's Blu-ray looks and sounds very good, however.

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!