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THE VANISHING (SPOORLOOS)
Directed by George Sluizer
You know you have watched a great thriller when your jaw literally drops as the film it comes to
its conclusion and your nerves are completely destroyed. It is so rare that a film will engross you
in such a way with its characters, lulling you into trusting them, even the villain, and pulling off
what is the cinematic equivalent of smashing you in the face with a sledge hammer. Even rarer is a
film that can pull off such a shock without a single contrivance. Looking back, I know that I
should have, in some sense, foresaw the ending. This is a strong testament to how rational the film
actually is, and how disturbing that rationality is.
THE VANISHING is about Rex (Gene Bervoets) and Saskia (Johanna ter Steege), who are
vacationing. When they stop for gas and refreshments, Saskia disappears. We then watch as,
during the same time period, Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) meticulously plans
the crime he is about to commit. Three years later, Rex is still searching for Saskia, and is finally
confronted by Raymond, her kidnapper, who offers to show him what happened to Saskia and
explain why he did it.
The film has a surprisingly slow pace for a thriller, which is much more compelling. It lulls you
not only into, as I mentioned before, trusting the villain, but into trusting human nature itself. If
anything, the film is a study on the dark side of people and how when there is good in us, evil
must offset it; a disturbing, yet unquestionably interesting, idea.
Although the kidnapping takes place early on, Sluizer pulls off one of the most important things a
thriller should do. In this very short time (less than thirty minutes) he actually makes us feel that
Rex and Saskia are real people, and that they are actually in love, something that the supposed
greatest thriller director, Alfred Hitchcock, could not do in over two hours in REBECCA. More
difficult than making the protagonist feel real is making the antagonist, a self-proclaimed
psychopath, seem like a real person. We see his daily life with his family, and he seems like a great
father and husband (“I’m the only Frenchman who can say that he’s known only one woman in his
life”), which makes his actions that much more effective.
The perfect complement to such a film is its haunting visuals and its beautiful, chilling score.
There is a shot early on in the film that is simply unnerving. Rex and Saskia’s car had run out of
gas in the middle of a long, dark tunnel. Afraid that they are going to get hit by a passing car that
does not see them, Rex urges Saskia to leave, but she protests, claiming that there is a flashlight in
the car. As she searches for it, Rex leaves her there, screaming and terrified, to walk to a gas
station. When he comes back, Saskia is no longer in the car, so he drives out of the tunnel. We see
that drive from his point of view, and overbearing darkness of the tunnel feels like something out
of a nightmare. The score, by Henny Vrienten, has become one of my favorites of all-time. It grabs us, and like all of the great thrillers’ scores, can send a shiver down our spines on its power
alone.
My Rating: Masterpiece
Review by Jared Mills
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