Twixt

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Year Released: 2011
Rating: 0.5

A writer of horror stories (Val Kilmer) wanders into a tiny town without a real bookstore to sell and sign copies of his new book, but he's quickly informed by the yokels (led by Bruce Dern) that a girl was found with a stake in her chest and there are supernatural oddities afoot. The film gives the game away when Kilmer's character is described as a "third rate Stephen King," and this is certainly a third-rate horror film, unable to generate any amount of suspense and concluding almost abruptly (leaving me to wonder "that was it?") - to make matters worse, Coppola wrote into his inane story Edgar Allan Poe (Ben Chaplin), who shows up when Kilmer mixes Irish whiskey with sleeping pills. Coppola, who was once one of the major artistic forces in film in the '70's, has not made a good movie (in my opinion) since his take on Dracula in 1992; the closest this gets to spooky is painting Elle Fanning white.