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…

Spoorloos aka The Vanishing is a Dutch thriller based on the novel The Golden Egg, which is the magnum opus of author Tim Krabbé and the film serves as the crowning achievement of Dutch director George Sluizer's career. The story portrays a man, Rex, whose wife is kidnapped during a vacation in France as well as the perspective of the man responsible for her disappearance.

What struck me most when watching the film was the unusual, but intriguing story structure and how it was used to offer the viewer a full dive into the mind of the disturbed man rather than just a glimpse. It is a different kind of "whodunnit?" since we know early on whom the kidnapper is,…

Week 37 of A History of Horror – 2017 Weekly Challenge - Serial Killers

Hoop-Tober IV: The Final Chapter #4

A Dutch woman goes missing while holidaying in France. Three years later her partner is still trying to discover what happened to her, clinging to the hope that she might still be alive.

It's taken me far too long to get around to seeing Spoorloos, nearly 30 years which I fear has taken a good deal of sting out of the story. It means that I more or less knew where the story was going to end up, but that's not really the point of the story.

It's about an obsessive search for the truth and a dip inside the…

The Vanishing is a mystery film where the “mystery” is solved for us from the onset. Rex (Gene Bervoets) and Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) are enjoying a holiday trip in rural France when a potentially dangerous vehicle situation puts their pleasant interactions to the test and sheds light on some intriguing character nuances. We see them pull into a crowded gas station just as we see a third character, Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), putting a fake cast on his right hand while sitting in his parked car before he emerges at the gas station to scope the customers. The interactions between Rex and Saskia during their few minutes at the gas station, as they relax and play mind games with…