Brad Anderson is– in this humble critic’s opinion– one of our most underappreciated directors.  This is the guy that made my absolute favorite horror movie of the decade (Session 9, see it immediately if you’ve never caught it), the guy that pulled the best performance I’ve ever seen out of Christian Bale (The Machinist, a film I doubly appreciate for its inherent weirdness and its frequent pseudo-references to Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor), the guy that made… Next Stop Wonderland?  Well, everyone’s gotta stop somewhere.  Anderson’s most recent stop?  The Vanishing on 7th Street, which arrived to not a lot of critical acclaim last year.  Is the film as pedestrian and disappointing as you might’ve heard?  Does star Hayden Christensen turn in an Attack of The Clones-level performance?  Find out after the jump, folks…

Magnet has released a new trailer for Vanishing on 7th Street, with enough footage not found in the first to be worth a look.  Directed by Brad Anderson (The Machinist) follows a group of strangers who survived when “an unexplained blackout plunges the city of Detroit into total darkness, and by the time the sun rises, only a few people remain.”  Hayden Christensen (Takers), John Leguizamo (Gamer),  Thandie Newton (2012), and newcomer Jacob Latimore star.

Hit the jump for the trailer and official synopsis.

I didn’t know much about Brad Anderson’s upcoming horror film The Vanishing on 7th Street, but after seeing the trailer I think the film looks pretty sweet.  The movie is about a the mass dissaperance of apparently the entire world’s population, and the need to stay in the light in order to remain non-disappeared. I dig the cool Twilight Zone-esque premise.  I also like seeing John Leguizamo not react to a terrifying phenomenon with math puzzles.  The film also stars Hayden Christensen and Thandie Newton.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer, images and the synopsis.  The Vanishing on 7th Street will be playing as part of the Midnight Madness program at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

When I first heard about Vanishing on 7^th Street a few months back, I was intrigued. First of all, it follows a group of people suffering through the aftermath of the mass, unexplained disappearance of seemingly everyone else in the world: an awesome concept that’s right up my alley. Add to that a really cool director in Brad Anderson (The Machinist) and you’ve got something that should rate pretty high on the flicks-to-watch-for meter.  But ultimately, you just never know until you see some kind of visual evidence.

Well, now we’ve got some. Quiet Earth has the first five stills from the film and while there’s not a whole lot going on in most of them, they are freaking gorgeous, absolutely oozing stylish creepiness. Vanishing, which should drop some time in 2010, is officially one of my most anticipated films of the year.  Hit the jump to check out the images.  Vanishing on 7th Street stars Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton, and John Leguizamo.

Brad Anderson (The Machinist, Session 9) is set to direct the thriller, Jack.  According to Variety, the film will be about a serial killer with amnesia and what happens when “the amnesiac falls in love with a doctor but as the killer’s memories begin to surface, he must decide whether to make a clean start or embrace the killer within.”

With production set to begin on August 30^th, it’s unclear what this means for Anderson’s upcoming adaptation of the graphic novel, The Living and the Dead.   We haven’t heard much about the project since we last reported on it in October, but I still hope that the underrated director can get to it eventually since I would love to see his take on it.  In the meantime, Anderson’s next film, Vanishing on 7^th Street, should be coming out sometime later this year even though it doesn’t yet have a release date.