Review #214: The Vanishing (1988)

This review was originally written in 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #69: The Vanishing (1988)

The Vanishing is a Dutch-language film about Rex, a man, whose girlfriend, Saskia, disappears while the two are driving through France and he spends the next three years obsessing over her disappearance. The movie is also about Raymond, the man who abducted Saskia, and when the two finally come face-to-face, Rex has to learn about his enemy in order to find out what happened to the woman he loved.

This is... a strange film, and I'm not entirely sure whether I liked it or not. (If I had known it was going to be such a bummer of a film I probably would have watched it sooner to get it out of the way, but c'est la vie.) It's told in a very strange manner, jumping forward and backward through time at various points (and sometimes into dreams) with very little fanfare, and I don't know if the version I was watching was poorly translated, but certain parts of the movie didn't make very much sense (and/or didn't quite match up to a synopsis I read after watching the film). Also, I hate to still be playing this game of "But Is It Horror?" but I found this to be much less horror and much more suspense/thriller, which is perplexing to me because according to the IMDB trivia this was rated the 25th scariest movie of all time by Entertainment Weekly, and allegedly Stanley Kubrick "thought The Vanishing was the most terrifying film he had seen". I can't deny that the villain in this film is unnerving and scary, but because of how this story is told I could never call it "the most terrifying" of anything. I kind of feel like the more you know about something, the less scary it can be, and this movie is 100% about making sure the audience knows as much as possible about the killer. So again, it's perplexing to me.

Although I don't think this movie was particularly exciting or enjoyable to watch, I did find a lot of it interesting. I thought it was fascinating how it shows the processes Raymond uses to plan out his intended kidnapping, and it even walks you through several of his failed attempts, and a huge portion of the film is set up to explain to the viewer why Raymond is the way that he is. I found that all to be very interesting, and very novel for an approach towards a story about abduction and/or murder. However, this movie is a BUMMER. The "protagonist" (if you can call Rex a protagonist, the trailer tries to make it seem like the movie is about Raymond but I don't necessarily feel the movie does that) Rex makes some of the worst decisions you can make as the movie nears its climax. Like, I get it, it makes sense for his character, but I also kind of hate his character. Rex's decision at the end of the movie puts a LOT of faith in this person that has admitted to kidnapping (and either murdering or, less likely, keeping as a slave for three years) his girlfriend, so no matter how curious he might be, it's incredibly stupid for him to put his life in Raymond's hands. Best-case-scenario, he finds out the truth but dies. Worst-case-scenario, he just dies (because neither he, nor the viewer, will know if Raymond is lying and just decides to kill him).

So, I dunno, I guess the writer of this movie (or at least the book it was apparently based on) was trying to tell a story that I'm just not interested in. I don't care if it makes the most sense for your characters to act out a story that is no fun to watch, it's still going to be no fun to watch. I guess I would recommend this film if you know you're going in for a bummer of a movie, but with me knowing nothing about it before starting the film I was pretty disappointed.

Overall Rating: 5/10 Drowning Dolls

Further Viewing: Apparently this got an American remake in 1993 starring Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland; I might watch that soon to see if I like it better than the original.