The Vanishing ( 1988) - NETHERLANDS

The Vanishing is a film directed by George Sluizer. The film is based on the novel The Golden Egg by Tim Krabbé. It was released in 1988 and is in French and Dutch. Sluizer later remade the film in English, but the remake was poorly received.

PLOT : Three years after the mysterious abduction of his girlfriend while the two were on vacation, a man tracks down her kidnapper. The abductor, a seemingly normal professor who contacts the young man through the mail, is actually a cold-hearted clinician of terror. When her kidnapper promises to reveal the location of his lost loved one, their confrontation explodes.

A thriller free of onscreen violence, George Sluizer's original Dutch-French version of The Vanishing (1988) reveals the capacity for evil lurking beneath the most banal surfaces and the dangers of wanting to know too much. Adapted by Sluizer and Tim Krabbé from Krabbé's novel The Golden Egg and set in brightly bland every day locations like a highway rest stop and a country home, the story of a woman's sudden disappearance becomes a creepily deliberate examination of both the psychologically crippling impact of her vanishing on her lover, and the criminal's unfathomable motives. Shifting point of view midway through the film with an extended flashback, the viewer seems to learn everything there is to know about the crime yet what remains unseen, and the unspoken implications of what is known, deepen the disturbing effect as well as enhance the suspense. With an ending that offers chillingly inevitable closure devoid of any uplift, The Vanishing was not released in the U.S. until 1991; critics and art house audiences, though, embraced The Vanishing's resolutely dark vision. Sluizer's 1993 American remake of The Vanishing, however, became a star vehicle for Kiefer Sutherland and Jeff Bridges executed with far less subtlety.

The film was indeed well done and what struck the most was the focus on that of the villain. It is a portrayal of a normal, respectable family man who trains himself in meticulous detail for an abduction. His cold, calculating approach is probably the most frightening aspect. His inhumanity is difficult to comprehend. Exquisitely creepy and too , too chilling . A masterpiece of psychological horror.

It was Ranked 55 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

IMDB Info :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096163/