Ford Copola,God bless the man! has made an dream, a nightmare if I want to be specific. This movie is a surrealistic piece of art that can hide behind it as an excuse for violating the movie norms like plot, the form, and the concept of time in a motion picture. It is better to say he wants to experience and challenge himself as a classical director. So, yeah! this is not a movie you want to watch with bunch of kids or your girl friend as a entertaining or romantic memory, and this is cause of this poor rating in IMDB for this movie, but if you understand the art as a course in the college you sure will thanks the old Francis for making this one.Music is incredible, plot is great and more complex to catch up, and cinematography is a highlight to mention.

Released in 2011 and Written & directed by Francis Ford Coppola, "Twixt" is a mystery dramedy with elements of horror starring Val Kilmer as Hall Baltimore, a mystery/horror writer with a declining career. On his latest book tour he arrives in a small town and gets caught up in a murder mystery upon meeting the eccentric sheriff, Bobby LaGrange (Bruce Dern). He meets a quasi-goth girl named V (Elle Fanning) who reminds him of his pubescent daughter. There's also a camp of weirdo goth-kids across the lake and Edgar Allen Poe shows up now and then as a kind of spirit-guide (Ben Chaplin), but what's dream and what's reality? And who murdered the female in the morgue? Alden Ehrenreich is on hand as the leader of the wannabe vampire youths, Flamingo, while Anthony Fusco plays the dubious pastor. Joanne Whalley appears as Baltimore's wife while Bruce A. Miroglio plays the fat bastage deputy. "Twixt" (as in 'betwixt,' between) combines the look of Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992) with the inscrutableness of 2007's "Youth Without Youth" plus a sense of humor. It's a quirky, hermetic mystery flick that leaves you scratching your head, but you strangely find yourself enjoying the ride, for the most part. It's a fun Gothic tale with beautifully haunting cinematography & atmosphere, highlighted by Poe, bell towers, ghosts and bats in the belfry, which bring to mind the horror tales of KD/MF, like 1987's ABIGAIL and 1993's IN THE SHADOWS. The enhanced moonlighting and otherworldly blueish gray tones are awesome. At the same time, "Twixt" is about the creative process as we observe the desperation of a writer with a splash of actual talent scraping the bottom of the barrel, often under the influence of sundry intoxicants. Will he come up with a best seller? Will he solve the murder mystery? Will he come to terms with his ghosts of the past and his inner demons, so to speak, specters and demons that arise from his guilt over what happened to his daughter? A lot of the movie is an internal dialogue with the writer's own ghosts and literary influences. Poe and Charles Baudelaire (a notorious substance abuser) are referenced, with the former intermittently appearing, but only when Baltimore is under the influence, or dreaming. Did the abuse and murder of the children happen as shown? Or did Poe and the vampire incarnation of his own daughter serve as muses to the writer as he works his way through creating a story that turns his career around? Coppola leaves it up to you to decide what is real and what is imagination, but the answers are there if you want to mine 'em. Francis got the story from a dream he had while staying in Istanbul. This sets-up the criticism that Coppola's dream is the audience's nightmare. While "Twixt" leaves too many threads dangling, the parts are all there; they just needed sewn together more effectively. Then again, Francis likely wanted the viewer to leave with questions to ponder. See below for insights. The film runs 88 minutes and was shot at Kelseyville and the Clear Lake area of Northern California. GRADE: B- (6.5/10)MISC. INSIGHTS ***SPOILER ALERT*** (Don't read further unless you've watched the movie)A lot of what happens in the town was the author working out his story. Most of it isn't real. The sheriff and deputy are real, as are their deaths at the end, not to mention Baltimore's wife. The sheriff really wanted to write with him. The movie shows what Baltimore experienced as he journeys through his creative process. His book is completed by the end, selling 30,000 copies.The bell tower keeps 7 different times, a representation of when Baltimore wasn't able to go on a trip with his daughter, as he set the clock with the wrong time, so the alarm didn't go off. And his daughter died on the trip. So "time" in the novel for him is useless and naturally the antagonist. Even V says keeping track of time "here" is pointless, which is why she missed his book signing. A big part of the movie is Hall's loss of his daughter. Time is the 'villain.' By not dealing with the tragic accident Baltimore is figuratively keeping his daughter undead. He's fighting time somehow. The age of his daughter when she died is also pertinent. She was betwixt a child and a teenager. And Hall was perhaps between deadlines and going on tours, thus missing out on some of her late childhood/early adolescence ("I thought they would be small boats... children's boats...") The vampire kids represent the strange changes children go through as they enter their teens – the music they like, how they dress, etc. – as they start developing a disposition of their own. It seems so weird to their parents who suddenly find themselves "on the outside looking in." Sheriff LaGrange represents the older generation thinking "Bah, these kids today!" The psycho pastor slays the kids to keep them from "becoming vampires," that is, becoming teenagers who will lose their innocence as they make many mistakes learning to decide for themselves. Flamingo is akin to the Pied Piper; he "gets away" at the end because he'll always be around: There will always be a teenage sense of rebellion, regardless of the clothes it wears.If my comments sound like several dubiously-linking threads its because the movie leaves you with this impression.

At first, seeing an almost distractingly bloated Val Kilmer in the lead makes you think this is going to be a conventional B-movie; it turns out to be one of the weirdest movies I've seen lately! It's a highly stylized, sordid, Gothic fairy tale that draws heavily from Edgar Allan Poe, but also name-drops Stephen King and Charlie Chan! The use of color is striking (at times recalling "Sin City"), and there are some clever ideas in the script (the tower clock with 7 different clocks that tell 7 different times!). It's not surprising that this film went straight-to-DVD in most countries despite Coppola's name - it's far too eccentric for most audiences (there is even a sudden comedic interlude in the middle!) - but it's not without interest, even if your most likely reaction at the end will be "WTF?". **1/2 out of 4.

I feel like this movie was filmed on the first draft of a script. There were good ideas and an interesting overall plot, but...it was just too disconnected to make a great movie - or even a good movie.Val Kilmer did a good job in this role, as did Bruce Dern. The rest of the cast did just fine as well.The special effects had that sort of artsy feel to them - which is short-hand for low budget but dressed up in a creative way.Anyway, the plot consists of Kilmer's character on a book-signing tour. His character is a drunk and his home life is in turmoil. Dern approaches him with an idea for a new story involving death, vampires, and a a few other interesting tidbits. After that, the movie takes a turn for the worse. Long confusing dream sequences interspersed between odd directions in the plot...The introduction of a convincing Edgar Allen Poe as a dream guide was cool, but everything else was just too weird. I know it was trying to be clever and artsy, but it failed to do even that.The ending was just a mess that made no sense. Unless you don't have anything else to watch, just pass on this movie.