When I was fifteen my teacher who taught Dutch made us read Tim Krabbé's 'Het Gouden Ei'. After reading it and discussing it in class we watched Spoorloos, based on said novel. I remember being a bit bored by the novel and thought the film was ok.

Many moons later I re-read the book and recognized it for the sucker punch that it is. (if you loved this film I urge you to read the novel, there are many excellent translations out there and it is well worth the read). A while back I hit a bit of a lull in my movie watching. Wanting to pick it up again I decided to rewatch this. Now, memory is a funny…

With an ingenious plot structure and a black heart that seems to revel in breaking the audience's own, The Vanishing is a bleak thriller that might not have the technical bravado of Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, but feels very similar in effect. A devastating loss, a study of grief and obsession, and an ending that is simply cruel, but feels just right. Adapted from Tim Krabbé's novella, The Golden Egg, it's a great example of the benefit of keeping the author on to co-write the screenplay. The pacing and structure work together to keep the plot barreling ahead (something other psych-thrillers occasionally stumble on by concerning too much runtime to developing the mood explicitly instead of letting the story…

She looks beautiful in the sunlight. It's the type of moment that you take for granted because you assume the world owes you thousands more just like it. You never believe it could be the last until it is, and even then you probably won't believe it. You refuse to believe it. You look at her there, basking in the glow of a world so seemingly perfect and on face value it's just another day. She looks beautiful in the sunlight, and it will shine tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

Only the sun suddenly stops shining. The world seems so dark. You look for her there, anywhere, everywhere but you see nothing. It was just…

Yet another horror that doesn’t live up to the insane amount of hype. I don’t see this as being anywhere near the creepiest film ever made. I don’t know — maybe it’s because of the slew of recent surface-tension horror movies we’ve had recently, or maybe because this does a lot of what Prisoners recently went on to do much better. 

It is unfair to compare some movies to each other. But I can’t help but think that if someone like Fincher or Haneke had material like this it could be something much more severe. It all seemed a little soft, considering there are a few moments that stand out as horrifying, for the most part I felt less unsettled…

Oh my. Oh yes. This is a NASTY little slice of thriller cinema. After a first act that’s more or less pleasant but with plenty of hints of palpable, lingering dread, it takes a deep, dark dive into the murky black waters of pure sociopathy and doesn’t once come up for air again from then on out. 

I feel like saying anything at all about the plot would be to say too much, but I suppose I’ll simply allow that a woman named Saskia, who is on vacation with her boyfriend Rex, goes missing. Then, Rex goes looking for her.

Like I said, I don’t want to spoil much more than that, and even the very little I’ve revealed kinda…