"Vanishing on 7th Street": One of the Biggest Bombs in Cinema History

Vanishing on 7th Street showed up on my Hulu recommendations. The trailer depicted everyone in the world disappearing except for Hayden Christensen, John Leguizamo, the Love Interest, and her young son.  Wait -- two guys, one girl.  Will the one who doesn't get the girl be coded as gay?   I'm interested in mysterious disappearances, so I'll give it a shot.

Scene 1: John Leguizamo is working as a film projector, wearing one of those miner's headlamps so he can work in the dark.  He is reading about mysterious disapparances through history, like the lost colony of Roanoke, which left the clue "Croatoan."  What a coincidence! He leaves his booth to demonstate that he's not gay by flirting with a girl, then returns.  Suddenly the power goes out!  He stumbles out into the movie lobby -- no one around, just piles of clothes.  Everyone was zapped away naked.  Is it the Rapture?  A collision with a parallel world?  A joke?  "Alan Funt's going to pop out any minute," he says, a reference only viewers over age 70 will catch. 

A cute security guard (Arthur Cartwright) was also Left Behind.  He and John walk through the mall with flashlights, but suddenly he vanishes, too, leaving only clothes.  Too bad we don't see them naked as they zap away.

Scene 2:  Love Interest wandering through a hospital where everyone has also vanished, leaving clothes.  A man was left behind in the midst of surgery, his chest open.  He awakens -- and vanishes!

Scene 3: Hayden Christensen awakens in his bed in a room full of Valentine's Day stuff, red candles flickering, and calls for his girlfriend/wife to establish that he's not gay. She's gone. A picture tells us who they are: a news team, Paige and Luke.  Ok, a heterosexual-only post-Apocalypse.  Darn!  I'll keep watching on the off chance that other survivors will be gay-coded.   Besides, the mysterious disappearances...

He notices that the power is out, and his cell phone isn't working.  Wouldn't they continue to work automatically, for a while?  Nevertheless, he puts on his snazzy business suit and walks down the 1,000 stairs to the lobby of his snazzy building, and into the street.  Piles of clothes and crashed cars everywhere!  An airplane falls out of the sky behind him. It's been flying on auto-pilot since last night?  

Scene 4:  Into the news office.  Wait -- Luke was celebrating Valentine's Day, but there's Christmas stuff everywhere, and it's warm enough to go outside without a coat, in Detroit. What month is this?  He calls for girlfriend Paige, and heads to her office -- we zoom in to a picture of Paige, her husband, and her kid.  So she was having an affair with Luke.

He looks through his desk and finds a photo of him with his ex-girlfriend or dead wife, and gets all verklempt.  Everyone in the world has vanished, and you're bothered by a photo of an ex?   We see a shadow gradually enveloping the photo.  Stylistic effect, or is something taking all of the images of humans, too?

Scene 5:  72 hours later, night.  A person jogging with a flashlight, face hidden by a hoodie.  A shadowy being lurks by a hot dog stand, but dissipates. They take  refuge in a car and start to drink, when a man accosts them: "I need a light!  All I have is a cigarette lighter!"   Jogger ignores him, and he is vanished by one of the shadowy beings.

Jogger scavenges in the cars for food and weapons -- try a grocery store, dude.  A little girl survivor stares at them.  They jog to Sonny's Bar on 7th Street, where the lights are still on.  No one inside, just piles of clothes, some carefully arranged, not at all like they would look if you zapped out of them.

Scene 6: Surprise!  The jogger is Luke!  How is that a surprise?   He gets drunk while looking at the bar photos of atom bombs exploding.  Weird bar decor.  He follows a noise into the basement -- full of survivalist supplies -- and is accosted by James (Jacob Latimore), a young boy with a gun. 

After some posturing, he explains that his mother worked as a bartender here, so she knew about the survivalist supplies.  She's out now, investigating a light in a church nearby. Were you trying to attract survivors by leaving the lights on?  If so, why the gun?

Luke points out that people keep vanishing, so chances are Mom is not coming back.  They need to get out of the city.  What for?  Will the countryside be different?  And by the way, the sun is rising later and setting earlier every day.  Soon it will always be night.

Wait -- how can the shadow beings do that?  If they make the Earth spin more slowly, it would result in longer days and nights.  If they change the angle of the Earth's rotation, it would result in perpetual night in one hemisphere and perpetual day...did no one thnk this through?

A crazy lady comes in, searching for her baby (The Love Interest from Scene 2).  There's a gun on the pool table, but she doesn't see it until the idiot Luke says "Don't point that gun at me!"  Then she threatens to shoot them unless they give back her baby.

Scene 7:  Leguizamo from Scene 1 lying on the ground with a severe head injury.  Meanwhile, we flashback to Crazy Lady being a non-crazy doctor or nurse, smiling at the babies in maternity, sneaking out for a cigarette -- when the lights go out!  Then running home to check on the pile of clothes that was her husband, and the vanished baby. 

Got it -- the survivors all had other lights on when the power went out -- a headlamp, candles, a cigarette.  But the moment they are immersed in darkness, the shadow beings vanish them.

Back in the bar, Crazy Lady gets a drink of water and un-crazifies.  They hear Leguizamo calling for help, and go out to fetch him. 

The gang's all here, and identified as heterosexual except for the prepubescent James, so I'm out.  I'll just fast-forward to see if anything interesting happens.

 Beefcake: None.

Luke's Ex-Wife/Affair with Paige: What sounded like a major plot arc is never mentioned again. Why include it?

Explanation of What's Going On: No.

Finding a Way to Fight Back: No.

Heterosexism:  James meets a girl.  They ride off into the sunset together (so to speak).  Granted, she is only nine years old to his 12 1/2, but it still provides a heterosexist conclusion to an awful dreck of a movie.

Bomb: $22,000 in the U.S., $1,000,000 overseas, on a budget of $10,000,000.  Only to appear on recommendation lists on streaming services, to lure in unsuspecting Hayden Christensen fans.

My Grade: H (two grades lower than an F)