A sudden power blackout plunges Detroit into darkness. When the power returns a few seconds later, anyone who didn't have their own non-mains powered light source to hand is gone, their clothes in a pile wherever they stood.
Three days later, it is clear that the effects are at least nationwide, which makes the title seem rather understated (would not The Vanishing have been shorter and punchier as well as more accurate?). It is also clear that all power sources - batteries, generators, even the sun itself - are running down.
In these bleak circumstances, a small group of survivors, dragging their diminishing sources of light with them, stumble across each other and bicker about what to do next.
After a promising opening, Vanishing on 7th Street loses momentum as the characters sit in place and squabble for an inordinately long time, pushing the threat of the shadows (whatever they are and whatever they want) into the background and eroding my engagement with the situation and the characters I'm supposed to root for. The film's sense of progress is lost here, and it never recovers it.
I tend to feel that the root cause of the loss of momentum is a lack of purpose to the shadow vs human conflict. What's doing this and why? We will never know. That sense of mystery can sometimes work: part of Night of the Living Dead's effectiveness as a film comes from the fact that no-one understand why the dead have returned as cannibalistic monsters. But at least the characters in Romero's movie had a clear purpose in response: to survive until help comes. The group here have given up on help and can't agree on anything, so they barely move from the spot where they meet. Even when they do act, it's without any goal beyond "exist for a few seconds more".
Ultimately, this one runs out of juice even faster than the draining batteries the characters have to deal with.
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