The Vanishing (1988) - "Sometimes I imagine she's alive. Somewhere far away..."
I remember reading good things about this movie months ago. But it wasn't until very recently I was finally able to give it a watch. The truth is, I think I was a bit hyped after reading all those wonderful things about this film. Having such high expectations might have spoiled my experience a little bit.
The story is about a Dutch couple on vacation in France. They are having a good time and the woman decides to go buy some beverages in a rest stop but she never returns. Since she had the car keys the man is unable to move the car. He begins to search for her near the shop but she is nowhere to be seen. She simply vanished.
Years later, the man begins to receive letters from an unknown individual offering to meet in person. One day after, he does meet the mysterious person. All he wants to do is to know what happened with his girlfriend.
His biggest problem is that he will now have to deal with a real sociopath. This disturbed man doesn't look like a dangerous person. In fact, he seems like a normal family man. Underneath that gentle touch, there is a man without consciousness capable of the cruelest acts one can think of.
However, he doesn't take risks. He acts in a very calculated way and always has a well-designed plan to have his own way. The missing girl's boyfriend, on the other hand, finds himself in a very vulnerable position between the deep need to know what happened and the risk of having to interact with this man.
The acting was good, the best-acted character was in my opinion, the villain. His performance was far from other iconic performances of sociopaths/psychopaths like the ones we can find in movies such as American Psycho or Nightcrawler, but this character was clearly the most interesting to me.
The story despite being very simple, is intriguing enough and can keep most people interested in it even though the movie does have its slow moments. It is not a scary movie and not very disturbing. It shouldn't be hard to find other movies that are more impactful. However, it has a proper ending that could be shocking for some people.
If you enjoy the mystery/thriller genres, then you should definitely check this movie out. It is worth watching but far from the best.
The best
- Good plot and acting.
- Strong ending but necessary to provide a strong experience to the viewers. Otherwise, this would have been a very soft movie.
The worst
- There are some slow moments. I got sleepy for a while. I went to get a snack to wake myself up and enjoy the final 30-20 minutes.
- Its level of scariness is overestimated. Maybe the people from its time were most sensitive when it comes to these topics.
More information: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/8740-spoorloos
Review: AAA
In numbers: 7/10
Cool that you watched a movie from my home country. This is - in my opinion - one of the better movies from The Netherlands, at least in the genres that I'm interested in. It's very low budget but - due to most of the dialogue being in French - it doesn't feel very much like a Dutch movie.
The book it was based on is pretty famous in The Netherlands and unfortunately I believe I already knew about the ending before I got to watch the movie. I've seen it twice and it's pretty intriguing.
I advice you not to watch the 1996 Hollywood remake unless you like to compare different versions of movies.
And yes, people in the late 80s were used to slower movies, even though the 80s were a great time for horror. Films were more about suspense ( a slower build up ) and I think this one needs to be seen as a slow suspenseful thriller with an unescapable ending, more like European art house than main stream.
Is your favorite genre suspense? I don't think I will watch the remake hehe.
Btw, there is a very weird movie I watched recently but decided not to write about, at least not yet. It is from a Russian director, the movie is called Stalker have you seen it? I also have the movie Solaris from the same director and will probably watch it this weekend.
I think you might enjoy the movies from this director. I saw the Hollywood version of Solaris some time ago but I am really interested in watching this earlier and more original version. Also, have you watched the new Devs series? it became one of my favorites. This is the article I wrote about it https://steemit.com/series/@dedicatedguy/devs-the-box-contains-us-the-box-contains-everything-and-inside-the-box-is-another-box
Hey man,
I have been wanting to reply to this for a while ( but I hardly visit Steemit nowadays )
The suspense (sub)genre has definitely been my favorite for a long time. Ever since I saw Hitchcock's 'The Birds' on TV, in my early teens.
Many of my favorite movies fall in that category. In fact, now I think of it, I like it way more than horror ( even though I used to think that it was horror that I loved ).
I definitely know Stalker. Tarkovsky was a legendary filmmaker and movies like these are the kind of food that I devoured in the years that I studied film ( history ) in University ( 2000 to 2007 ). Solaris and Stalker are among my favorite movies ever, also because I love sci-fi and movies that intellectually challenge me without being boring.
I also watched the George Clooney remake of Solaris. It's not bad but incomparable to the original.
By the way, I read the book 'Solaris' by Stanislav Lem ( that Tarkovsky's movie is based on ). It's amazing! If you read sci-fi ( I read a lot of it ), I highly recommend it.
I will check out Devs but must admit that I hardly watch series these days as I really value my time.
Un abrazo and let's connect more on Hive from now on,
Vincent
Lovely sum of the story. I just watched the movie Force Of Nature and it disappointed me. I didn't fall asleep but I did skip a few minutes here and there 🙂. I don't recommend it