The Vanishing

some people are amazed by this movie, even chilled, but i thought it was a complete waste of my time. the entire first two acts of the film are great, setting up a tense situation where the viewer is intently waiting to see the dramatic climax. and then the whole thing goes to hell! my only qualm is that the ending is entirely unbelievable. no one, NO ONE, would volunteer for this uncertain fate. i can't believe that this man, the protagonist, would be so distraught that he'd volunteer to suffer the same fate as his mysteriously absent girlfriend. she was obviously dead; she never tried to make contact with her old life. so, either he is the world's laziest suicide, unable to commit the act himself, or he's an idiot. as i watched the movie, when the protagonist is presented with the choice of finding out what happened to Saskia by undergoing the exact same treatment, i almost turned the movie off. all i could think was that there was a third choice: beat the kidnapper into a pulp, take his ass back to your apartment, and torture the information out of him. not agree to die at the hands of the same bastard who killed your girl. hey, maybe i'm just too American to appreciate the emotional damage motivating this man's inexhaustible search, but all i know is that, given the same situation, my own need to know could be instantly replaced by an undying homicidal urge that i would gladly focus on the kidnapper who created this void in my life. i certainly wouldn't sign up to be buried alive. and just why does this budding killer bury people in the first place? he goes through all that preparation so he can just bury his victims? wouldn't he rather see their anguish? i just think all these characters are flat, thoughtless interpretations of how real people would conduct themselves in similar situation with similar motivations. i think this movie was written by a monkey with no human insight and the idea that people are genuinely frightened by this schlock causes me to doubt moviegoers more than i already do. personally, i think the deranged neighbor kid from Toy Story is more psychologically thrilling than this foreign rag.

According to Poe, without a traceable motive, anyone can commit murder with impunity. Thats what this movie documents. A sociopath who for an insane reason he's in his head concocted, plans and executes the perfect crime. His victim's lover refuses to give up on her disappearance, and begs the culprit for a private meeting, just so he may learn the truth. I cant think of a more successful development of a movie villain. The guy is plain evil, successfully living a double life that his family suspects, but is inclined to think of as a trivial extramarital fling. In France extramarital goings on, i assume Are trivial. You quickly loathe the man. He's rather hideous to look at, and his superior manner gets under your skin. Film is very well done, and the two hours is well paced. Understanding the murderers motives even upon revelation is somewhat confusing, and i dont think it was meant to be.

When I searched for "The Vanishing," all I could find was that abysmal "Americanized" version of the film starring Jeff Bridges. What a horrible mistake of a movie that was. Let's consider, instead, the original film in which a fellow and his girlfriend are on an outing when she vanishes without a trace. He becomes obsessed with discovering what happened to her. Whether he can be completely successful in his quest is the whole point of the movie. Why the original director would remake this little masterpiece in English with a Hollywood ending is completely beyond me. See the original. You won't soon forget it.

*Spoiler* This movie had promise and was for the most part well-done except for one plot point that rendered the rest of it completely stupid-- that the guy willingly puts himself in the same position as his wife "in order to find out the truth" from the killer. One could argue that he suspected the guy would kill him and did it because he wanted to die and be with his wife again, but come on-- you don't let the guy who tormented you for three years by kidnapping your wife kill you as well and get away with both murders. F*cking just acquiescing to that sh*t. So crappy. [][

George Sluizer has made a movie that moves slowly forward, giving the viewer clues that work as pointers to take us back and forth in time. Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu as Raymond Lemorne depicts a man who knows the difference between right and wrong, but when he is 16, looking down from his parents veranda 15 feet above ground, he asks himself this question: Where is it predestined that I will not jump? And then he has to jump. This highly disturbing way of thinking moves him in a different direction. We see in his every day life that he is a most normal man, he has two daughters, a good wife, a job as a chemistry teacher. But he is something else too. Is he evil? This is a very disturbing movie.

I saw it with a friend when it was released. Then I went home and told my husband about it, and how impressed I was. He's not much of a moviegoer, but he's certainly sensitive to film: His favorites are The Third Man, Maltese Falcon, The Conversation-- all biggies. And when I rented "My Life as a Dog" and he started to watch it with me, he had to leave the room after the first ten minutes or so, saying, "This movie is going to be much too sad." Which, if you've seen that Lasse Hallstrom film, you know he pegged it. Anyway, he asked about the plot of "The Vanishing." I told him, he listened, and that was the end of it. Or so I thought. We're at a dinner party later that week, and I mention the movie. Someone asks about it, I start to describe it-- and my husband stops me. He says, "It's too disturbing to even hear the plot again." I never mentioned it again. Nor have I watched it again, and don't think I ever could. But I am forever glad that I saw it that first time. A gripping story that demands more emotion from the audience than almost any other film I can name.

Horror is probably my favourite genre, and I have seen a lot of horror movies. There were only a few movies that really left me as paralyzed and disturbed as this one. In the very beginning, the director masterfully lets you know that something is wrong, but you don't know exactly what and how bad it really is. You are left as clueless as the main character and through your own uncertainty you might get involved more than you think you would. The story is simple and the evil in it is banal, everything is so normal and so horrible at the same time. And it surely is the banality of evil and the tormenting uncertainty that make this movie almost unbearably creepy. The ending is absolutely, absolutely shocking and I still really don't like to think about it. If you don't like monsters, blood and pornographic violence and if you are looking for a smart, really creepy psycho-horror movie, this movie is for you. In my opinion, Spoorloos is what good horror is all about.

Just a second warning that there are quite a lot of spoilers in this review. More than I usually give away. This film has been given so much praise it's almost obscene. So it's even worse when you discover it's all a bunch of pretentious nonsense. I thought the beginning was intriguing but after the first half hour I was struggling to stay awake. The characters were unattractive and tedious, especially the bad dude. I really couldn't be bothered with him or his dreary life. The "hero" was just as bad. There was nothing interesting about what he was doing either. And both their characters remained remote and un-developed throughout. The story - such as it is - was meandering drearily along with no-one really doing anything, so I started hitting the fast forward button. That's always a bad sign. Finally it seemed like something interesting was happening. The hero had the bad dude by the lapels..... he was actually showing a smidgen of character, a bit of personality & gumption!!! Oh joy of joys!!! But it was short lived. He climbs into a car with the baddie and off they go and off the viewer goes back to snoozeville. Cue the seemingly endless monologue in the car from boring bad guy - the world's most annoying road trip. He's telling gormless bland inanimate hero some yawn-fest story about his lame past and eventually an even more boring exposition of how he kidnapped the mans fortunate girlfriend (I say fortunate b/c she at least was saved having to put up with this mind-numbing drivel) and his voice just goes on and on and I'm yelling "OH SHUT UP!!" at the screen. If it had been me in the car with the twerp I would have smacked him with a tire iron and driven myself back home long ago. *** Major spoiler ahead*** But throughout it all our hero just sits there like a brain-dead sloth gaping at the bad dude. Maybe he'd gone into a boredom-induced coma. Anyway, struggling not to throw a brick through the screen I persevered till a bit where they finally get out of the car & bad dude suggests to hero that he should let him do the same to him as he did to his girlfriend (ie drug him and bury him alive). Hero says "hiyuck!! Dat sounds like a cool idea!" and scoffs down the drugged drink and gets killed. What absolute nonsense. The ending wasn't "chilling" or clever or any of those other things people are saying. It was just stupid. No-one would do that. It makes no sense at all. Although I can see how being buried alive would be a more attractive proposition than having to drive all the way back home with Mr Personality gas-bagging about himself again. Don't waste your time on this one. And don't believe the hype - it's just people thinking it MUST be good coz it's foreign, has subtitles, has a lot of footage of people doing nothing of any real interest, is really depressing and has a sad ending. Beat yourself over the head with a blunt object instead. You'll get more out of it.

This movie gave me nightmares for...well, I'm still having them. Rex and Saskia are a young couple on vacation. They stop at a gas station, Saskia goes inside and never returns. Rex becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her and, when at last faced with the man who abducted Saskia, finally has the chance to find out. But there's one condition: Rex must surrender himself to Saskia's abductor and agree to experience the same thing she herself went through. The only trouble is, he has no idea what that might be, or even whether Saskia is alive or dead. Rex believes that the Not Knowing is the worst thing, but it isn't. The Knowing is the most horrible thing of all. This is a powerful film that practically punches you in the stomach with its gritty realism. The performances are flawless and haunting, and the climax and aftermath, delivered with a quiet matter-of-factness, are the very definition of horror. This is real horror, the kind we try not to think about but which can happen, and has. If this film doesn't disturb you, I can't think of anything that will. Highly recommended, but only for people who are emotionally equipped to deal with the fear and the terror that the camera never flinches from. People with claustrophobia would be wise to stay far away from this film.

This is not a token 10 out of ten to try and inflate the ratings for a movie I like. This is one of the few perfect movies I can honestly say I have ever seen. I'm a huge horror fanatic and I put off seeing this despite it being recommended time and time again because the subject matter is so mundane. This move is the only horror move I have ever seen move that transcended scary to downright shocking to my very soul. It was a very unique experience that no movie has ever duplicated before or since. Once it was over, i actually just sat there for about 10 minutes thinking about what I had just seen, it was only after pondering it for a bit that i realized that the pacing and just sheer implications of what i had just seen was probably the most disturbing and awful yet utterly brilliant and in a strange way beautiful thing I had ever seen because as others have stated, it couldn't have possibly ended any other way. The viewer won't want it to end any other way. Through impeccable pacing and direction George Sluizer manipulates the viewer in a way I never thought could be possible, it would be criminal to spoil ANYTHING from this movie but I found myself in the same conundrum the protagonist Rex finds himself in at the ending and rooting something yet at the same time dreading to see it's result, but I must see. I can't think of any ending to any movie that was more fitting and a better conclusion than the ending of Spoorloos. Fans of psychological horror, this more than anything is required viewing. I await the day that a film can make me feel the way this one did and frankly I doubt it will ever come. Bravo, and shame on you George for the abysmal American and Americanized remake that absolutely ruined this movie for so many people I know. This movie is a masterpiece and half the people I know will never be able to enjoy it.