Francis Coppola comes nearly full circle in his career with this embarrassing, juvenile horror pastiche, analogous to porn-parody in its mainstream pastiche of the genre. After breaking into show biz with soft porn, he first garnered attention 50 years ago with "Dementia 13" for Roger Corman, and unlike Corman's classic Poe adaptations of that era, Coppola's Poe pastiche here is terrible.
Main failing is a complete lack of self-awareness, which often besets artists full of themselves. As indicated in the dreadful "Making of" short subject directed by his grand-daughter Gia, Francis is caught up in the craft of filmmaking, including dabbling with that ever-trendy (and pointless) gimmick 3-D, oblivious to the silliness of his script and the lousy scenes printed. Clearly living in the past of his successes, married with an ill-advised affinity for independent (and amateurish) modern filmmaking, he seems to lack the necessary self- criticism that helped him fashion classic work 40 years back.
Similarly, his lead Val Kilmer is also a has-been, content with underplaying most scenes and overacting crucial emotional ones, when not indulging in idiotic impressions (the Kevin Spacey syndrome), as when egged on by Coppola to "do Mark Twain". Apparently both star and director expect to earn brownie points for not caring one whit whether they make fools of themselves.
Early in the film I sensed a promising return to a type of fantasy and horror that once gave birth to the seminal classic "Lemora" starring Rainbeaux Smith, beloved by connoisseurs if not the general public. Its director Richard Blackburn was a one-hit wonder, or perhaps less since this was not a hit but more of a cult classic.
But to paraphrase Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, as applied not to Dan Quayle in the political arena, but to leading lady Elle Fanning, "You're no Rainbeaux Smith". A talented young actress, Fanning is a dead space on screen here in the crucial part of the mysterious undead girl who lures Val into the story. Besides soft porn roots, Coppola in the '80s was famously a hanger-on to the Adult industry, attending annual AVN awards dinners and hob-nobbing with sexy XXX starlets. Had he chosen porn rather than horror for this 2011 backsliding exercise, he could have cast the perfect young beauty Elsa Jean or even fulfilled by dream of giving current jail-bait superstar Piper Perri a chance to show her acting chops in Elle's role.
Storyline of has-been, bargain-basement Stephen King horror writer Val (character name: Hall) ordered by his publisher to come up with a "bulletproof" ending for his new novel, or else, it was sad to see how perfunctory and dissatisfying an ending triple-threat Coppola concocted for this movie. The tongue-in-cheek performances (especially by Bruce Dern as sheriff and transparent bad guy, another Corman graduate) and series of stupid scenes included a rather lame in-joke of Val's nasty and venal wife played by his real wife Joanne Whalley (ex hyphenate Kilmer in her stage name). I would have preferred Nastassja Kinski doing a snake dance. Similarly, the handling of the red-herring goth cult of youngsters dangled for us was pure cliché and even less believable than such filler as presented in '60s softcore movies.
The acid test for this junker is how it would have been greeted had it not borne the prestigious Coppola name in its credits. Perhaps critics and audiences would have felt sorry for an unknown filmmaker breaking in with a failed but technically adept genre piece. But for an all-time great wasting his time and intelligence on such crap -unforgivable.
