Where do you start with a movie like Twixt?
I refuse to call this piece of shit a 'film' for douchey reasons and so as not to bring this to the same Asgardian realm that creations like The Godfather (I & II) and Apocalypse Now inhabit. Francis Ford Coppola, esteemed uncle of American Treasure actor Nicholas Cage, is possibly the greatest living American director; and is comfortably in the pantheon of best filmmakers of all time thanks to his work in the 1970's and early 1980's. The man single-handedly reformed the gangster picture genre, inspired countless more directors (just for an obvious example Martin Scorcese), and created a branch of Hollywood filmmaking that still influences the best and brightest artists today.
I refuse to call this piece of shit a 'film' for douchey reasons and so as not to bring this to the same Asgardian realm that creations like The Godfather (I & II) and Apocalypse Now inhabit. Francis Ford Coppola, esteemed uncle of American Treasure actor Nicholas Cage, is possibly the greatest living American director; and is comfortably in the pantheon of best filmmakers of all time thanks to his work in the 1970's and early 1980's. The man single-handedly reformed the gangster picture genre, inspired countless more directors (just for an obvious example Martin Scorcese), and created a branch of Hollywood filmmaking that still influences the best and brightest artists today.
His fall from grace was sudden but noticeable, and at this point has been consistently producing shit for 20 goddamn years. The crap that he makes nowadays can be legally fucked in all countries except for the Middle East & Tunisa, and has been ready and willing in 12 US states including California for more than 2 years.
You can legally take Jack out for a fancy dinner at some shitty chain like The Melting Pot, convince it that it's fine dining, and rail its brains out in the backseat of your BMW later that night after curfew when you find a dark enough parking space. The Godfather Part III can get drunk off the cheap wine coolers you brought and then go down on you while you listen to whatever trendy music youths these days are listening to, that Iggy Azalea abomination or whatever.
* * *
I preface this entry with all of these gross and uncomfortable images because, as the inexorable march of time drives us to our graves, so too will Twixt be out slutting it up and bringing great shame upon our families by not using proper protection while being viewed by middle-aged predators.
Val Kilmer's fat fucking face and godawful ponytail are the most visible initial atrocities. A "bargain basement Stephen King" as described by the inimitable Sheriff Bruce Dern. Kilmer is a shitty author who writes a book series about witches and is in this haunted Tom Waits narrated town, for a book signing, and is immediately reminded of how shitty he is by having to sign autographs in a hardware store. No one reads books in this haunted town except for Sheriff Bruce Dern, who off-duty writes vampire fanfiction.
I wish i was kidding you.
Kilmer, washed up alcoholic that he is, is henpecked by his wife over skype to stop drinking (he doesn't) and write a better, new book (he tries, but also doesn't). In a wine fueled masturbatory nightmare he dreams up Elle Fanning as "V", a 12 year old girl who was murdered along with 12 other children in the hotel he's staying in this shitty town, and takes the story to Bruce Dern who show him his automated vampire killing machine that he created while on the beat, financed by tax dollars. Kilmer then drunkenly tries to write a shitty story based off his ethanol-hazed ideas, reminding me of Jermaine Clement's character from Gentlemen Broncos while trying to change the names enough to not get sued.
It sucks.
The dream sequences of this FRANCIS FUCKING FOR COPPOLA WRITTEN, PRODUCED AND DIRECTED feature are referential to Frank "The Fascist" Miller creations like Sin City and The Spirit at best, and downright plagiarizing at worst. What's a good way to indicate to your retarded, popcorn munching audience that you're in a dream? Try to be creative, like Inception? Fuck that, just make it black and white, with only red as a visible color, and the ghosts are pure white instead of gray. Elle Fanning is white, btw. Blindingly so.
She's also the murdered, staked body that Sheriff Bruce Dern is keeping and tried to show Val Kilmer at the beginning in his city's morgue, a modified shipping container since that's all this backwoods 1/2 horse town can afford (Spoiler alert, btw, and if you need a spoiler alert for this fuck you)
Kilmer, inspired by his dream of "Edgar Poe" (not Edgar ALLEN Poe, mind you, we're not that formal since we're all world-class alcoho-thors), tries to write a book so his bitch of a wife stiops skyping him, telling him to start making money or else she'll burn his 1st Ed. copy of Leaves of Grass (my ass). So, in another Jameson's induced blackout, Kilmer gets writing lessons from the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe.
* * *
I watched The Raven a few weeks ago. The Raven made We Hate Movies' (http://www.whmpodcast.com/) WORST OF 2012 list, and their commentary is hilarious. John Cusack played a better Poe, a less shitty Poe, and a Poe I'd rather watch, in addition to having a better written, plotted, directed and conceived story despite having Alice Eve as an actress in it.
* * *
Taking a leaf out of Paranormal Activity's book, Kilmer decides to find out who murdered all the kids and Elle Faning in this haunted town by using a Ouija board, and gets the cast of The Andy Griffith show to help him: Sheriff Bruce Dern (aka Bobby LaGrange), a fatshit deputy, and a snotnosed redhead kid.
The board predictably goes nuts, pulling everyone's hands until fatass Kilmer asks who killed the kids, where it answers "B". Sheriff Bruce Dern panics, for no reason at all don't worry, and says that it must have been the teens at the lake that killed all these plot expedience children. Since it's always teens.
Kilmer decides to go down to the lake, and walks into the set of a Christian Youth Ministries video about the dangers of smoking marijuana cigarettes. All black eyeliner and slutty lace clothing everywhere, and meets the head goth. Predictably we're sent down the wrong path again through painfully convoluted and symbolic dialogue, and we learn there's still 25 minutes of movie left.
In YET ANOTHER GODDAMN DREAM SEQUENCE Val Kilmer, who at this point possesses shamanistic powers, conjures up Eddie Poe to recreate to him the memory of Elle Fanning and the rest of her churchgoing peers, who were murdered by a Jim Jones-esque priest a bunch of years before, seemingly the 1950's based off the clothes.
(Zack Snyder directs more nuanced and creative storylines, just in case you were wondering)
Eddie Poe continues the story by elaborating that Elle Fanning escapes from Jim Jones, saved by the same gothy youth fuck on a motorcycle that Kilmer just talked to down at the lake, only to be recaptured 30 seconds later by Jim Jones making the entire sequence not just confusing but unnecessary.
I'm going to drop the ironic dream sequence colors here since this is where it gets... really stupid.
Blatantly ripping off The Cask of Amontillado, Jim Jones immurements Elle Fanning (tying her up and bricking over the entrance to her cell). The GHOST OF EDGAR FUCKING ALLEN POE then tells Val Kilmer that his wife, Veronica (also oh so creatively Elle Fannings name), dies in all of his stories, under different names. So no we're in an Eddie Poe story.
Blatantly ripping off The Cask of Amontillado, Jim Jones immurements Elle Fanning (tying her up and bricking over the entrance to her cell). The GHOST OF EDGAR FUCKING ALLEN POE then tells Val Kilmer that his wife, Veronica (also oh so creatively Elle Fannings name), dies in all of his stories, under different names. So no we're in an Eddie Poe story.
Jim Jones then kills himself, and Sheriff Bruce Dern bursts in to wake Fat Kilmer up and tells him that all the girls in the story they're teaming up to write were killed because they were "evil sluts".
Then things fall apart.
Edgar Allen Poe dream escorts him to a cliff, where it is revealed through exposition that Val Kilmer has been suffering the entire time from depression for being too hungover to chaperone his daughter to the lake to ride boats with her friends, who was subsequently decapitated in a hilarious boating accident that i am not creative enough to describe, which explains why he's more of an alcoholic, why his wife is such a cunt, and why Poe keeps trying to tell Fatman to kill himself.
He then immediately wakes up, Bruce Dern has hung himself for some reason (probably for either being the priest who murdered the "evil sluts" or has just been going around killing ladies for some unexplained reason), and GUESS FUCKING WHAT he killed Elle Fanning. Who, upon Fatman Kilmer pulling the sheet off her body, grows vampire fangs and attacks him because why not.
Oh also in poorly done CGI her braces pop off her teeth and Kilmer tries to dodge them.
Then SMASH CUT and it turns out this was all a book that Val Kilmer was writing and his publisher tells him "you've done it again", Kilmer says "Nevermore" and we're treated to a paragraph of text telling us the book sold 30,000 copies and Kilmer's wife never burned his copy of Leaves of Grass.
Cue credits.
This negates anything FFC has ever done. Fuck all of the Coppolas. Lost in Translation sucks, too. May his bloodline be ended and their graves salted so nothing may ever grow. His destruction is the will of the gods. We are their weapon.
https://ia601607.us.archive.org/35/items/Episode92-TheRaven/TheRaven.mp3
