123 - Vanishing on 7th Street

    After power goes out everywhere, nearly everyone disappears, leaving behind their clothes.  A variety of survivors gather, and try to continue to survive.
    This is a fascinating movie, and not for a reason the director wanted.
    I have a lot of respect for Brad Anderson.  He directed Session 9, which is one of my favorite independent horror movies.  I didn't mind The Machinist, but I felt like the story was a little too derivative.  But this movie is directed well, and the spookiness is great.  And then the story has such a massive problem that it all falls apart.
    There's not too much to say about the story, because the premise is the story.  There are small things, like that they find a bar that has a generator running.  They want to find a car to jumpstart.  There's a small about of speculation about the possibility that there are spiritual/religious angles to explore.  They bring back the Roanoke Island settlement "Croatoan"  thing.  I like this story, but the use of the phrase in fiction feels like a desperate way to link the story into the real world.  Same thing happened on American Horror Story.
    What this story is lacking is character arcs.  Every character is introduced, and leaves, without having learned anything.  This would be fine, if the external plot gave us a reason to be interested.  You see, the premise is really interesting, and that's what kept me interested, the hope that more details about the event would be revealed.  Instead, nothing is explained.  No one learns anything.  Is it supposed to be hopeless?  I don't think it was intended to be so.
    The wiki article on the movie mentions one thing of interest.  The movie lost a massive amount of money.  The budget was around 10M.  The gross was $22,197.  Of course, it only was shown in 6 theaters.

    The movie felt a lot like Night of the Living Dead or a Twilight Zone episode that just never came to fruition.