Review of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) by Davey M — 12 Aug 2009

Landis' first segment is a pretty standard example of a below-mediocre Twilight Zone episode--a boring premise (we'll teach that racist the error of his ways!) executed boringly. Spielberg's is only slightly better, a Peter Pannish celebration of the magic of youth that is executed with assured style, but it's saccharine enough to make you want to vomit.

But after those two bits (and neither is awful, they're more enjoyable than a lot of TE episodes), things get good. Joe Dante's bit about a little boy with strange powers is freaky good; a crazy trip through a stylized nightmare world, with a real sense of mystery, some delightfully organic twists, and, once we finally know exactly what's going on, a full throttle tour de force that's as great a cinematic roller coaster as I've ever seen. The mastery of the visual medium is practically mind-boggling, and the places the plot goes, and ultimately where it ends, are so totally unexpected and strange and funny and unsettling I couldn't wipe the giddy smile off my face. Delicious.

And George Miller's is just as good. John Lithgow stars as a man whose paranoia gets the better of him when his flight finds itself in the middle of a thunderstorm. Lithgow gives another perfect performance, and Miller brilliantly shifts points-of-view, moving between (possibly) madman's world and the other passengers and flight attendants around him; if anything, it's a greater technical achievement than Dante's piece, though less showy. The result is something Poe would be proud of--in fact, even though it has nothing overtly to do with him, it's maybe the best Poe adaptation I've seen; a melding of the sane and the insane until they're no longer entirely distinguishable, and we're just left with fear, and a gremlin, and an entirely-earned wtf.

The nature of the anthology film is its hit-and-missery, but two gems and two mehs ain't bad. At all.