There has been something "going around" my li'l city and reader, I have caught it! It is some version of A Cold, but I have not been sick in years (nail polish emoji) and this Cold on Steroids is whipping my ass something good. I am vaccinated (and masked) to the high heavens (or the high hells, depending on which news channels you watch) and I know this does not make me impervious like John Travolta as the boy in the plastic bubble in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, but it does add insult to this injury. The same goes for my "treatment plan," which includes mainlining my late gramma's patented home remedy: onion sandwiches. (Great at driving away germs and paramours alike!) They ain't done shit except inflate my onion budget more than is reasonable!
(Edited to add: I tested negative on Friday but after noticing an actual fever I tried again a bit ago for funsies and sure enough, at long last I have finally been caught in Miss Covid's evil web. Fuck this shit! I'm so annoyed. Perhaps this--and only this, surely!--is the reason those onion sandwiches are failing in their duty.)
Last night, I sat upon my couch all wrapped up and a-wondering what to do with my time. I've been too tired to stay awake, too messed up to sleep; freezing cold and burning up simultaneously; trying to think with a head full of cotton wool and prone to bouts of vertigo. And then, in this time of trouble, Mother Tubi came to me, speaking words of wisdom:
Howzabout an early-aughties made-for-cable horror film that reunites LA Law alums Harry Hamlin and Susan Dey?
So I said sign me the eff UP and gave Disappearance (2002) a whirl and you know what? Mother Tubi never misses.
I fully cop to the fact that all the onion fumes floating around my apartment may have influenced my already illness-addled brain, but I was so into this movie. Then again, it was written and directed by Walter Klenhard, who also wrote an directed another of my favorite made-for-TV thrillers (Baby Monitor: Sound of Fear starring Josie Bissett of television's Melrose Place) so chances are it literally is just that good.
Pater Harry Hamlin and step-mater Susan Dey are hauling the kids through the Nevada desert for a little family bonding time. They make a stop at a time-honored horror movie location: the dusty gas station with a vaguely menacing attendant, then have some lunch at another time-honored horror movie location: the dusty diner full of flies and sun-burnt weirdos. They are in search of a town called Weaver, a long-abandoned mining village that is no longer shown on maps. In an unexpected twist, the sun-burnt weirdos deny they've ever heard of this "Weaver," never mind that it used to exist.
But this doesn't stop our family, who fires up their brand-new Ford Excursion™ (this shit must have been sponsored by Ford, I swear, it feels like a commercial for the Excursion™ at times) and head down a long, dusty road deep into the desert--despite being warned to "stick to the roads, lads pavement."
Sure enough, they eventually find Weaver, which indeed seems to be a tiny ghost town. They explore a bit, taking photos of musty, dusty buildings while noting that it's like all the people who live there...wait for it...disappeared. You know, food left on the tables, calendars from the 1940s, etc. They also find some footage that gives us a wee found footage moment of previous visitors to Weaver being pursued by someone...or something, dun dun dunnn.
Spooked, they go to leave but their Ford Excursion™ won't start. They stay the night in one of the buildings and I will admit: It was my turn to be spooked. In the middle of the night, Harry Hamlin grabs a flashlight and heads upstairs to investigate a noise down a dark hallway and it was a surprisingly effective sequence. I've said it time and time again, noises in the dark are all I really need for a horror movie to scare me and dagummit this worked.
The next morning, the Ford Excursion™ is missing altogether. Was it stolen by a someone...or something? The group splits up, and Harry Hamlin and A Boy take off across the desert, hoping to find help back at the dusty diner. Things get a little weird from here with more and more added to the mystery. Susan Dey falls down into a mineshaft and is pursued by someone...or something: We get a lot of heavy breathing and POV shots, but we never see what exactly it is. A Boy disappears after cresting a sand dune. There's a rundown cemetery that looks like the one outside Goodsprings in Fallout: New Vegas but there are fresh graves. The dusty town clearly has a secret, so I just kept falling deeper and deeper under Disappearance's spell.
Ultimately there are a bunch of theories as to what is what.
Is the mutated offspring of neutron bomb testing site victims living under Weaver like some kind of southwestern CHUDs? (Side note, in the pits of this grippe I can totally hear a commercial now, boasting that we should "Come try our brand-new southwestern CHUD sauce, only during 2-for-1 Fiesta Days at Applebee's!")
Is it the ol' "haunted ancient Indian burial ground" gag? (That is literally what they call it, so don't @ me!)
Is it aliens?
In the end, I don't think it makes a lick of sense. But 1) Maybe my soft-n-silky smooth sickness brain simply couldn't parse what was going on, and 2) Whether it made any sense or not, I do not care.
Because I had a great time! The tropes at work, as well as a passing nod to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, mean it hits many a-beat you've heard before but you know what? That's okay In fact, that's more than okay when you are feeling like CHUD crud. Tropes? Susan Dey? Harry Hamlin? A Town with a Secret? That is pure comfort, a better balm than even onion sandwiches sorry, gramma) or the freedom and safety you feel while driving a Ford Excursion™. As always, Mother Tubi knows best.