Vanishing on 7th Street (Brad Anderson, 2010)

It's fashionable for the sci-fi fraternity to pan anything starring Hayden Christensen after the Star Wars fiascoes, and it's fair to say he'll never develop a range beyond weaselly glowering. Add the hopelessly wet Thandie Newton as a second lead, have it directed by hack Anderson and things do not look promising. Still, if you do find in in your heart to accept all these limitations, this actually works ok on a popcorn level as a doomy catastrophe flick on the familiar riff of the collapse of civilisation in the face of a supernatural menace. The four characters holed up in a bar in an emptied city where the night eats up all caught in it are completely stock, of course, as is the course of survival-horror events, but there's a small saving grace in having the threat as nothing more than the elemental fear of the dark without attempting to add cod-scientific or religious explanations.

4/10