The Vanishing (1988)
★★★★ — The Vanishing (1988)
There's a moment in The Vanishing where you realise the film has done something extraordinary: it's shown you the monster in broad daylight, introduced him to you almost politely, and somehow made that a thousand times more disturbing than anything a shadowy figure lurking in a dark alley could ever manage. This is a film that doesn't hide its evil. It puts it right in front of you, blinking calmly in the sunshine, and dares you to look away.
Part of my A-Z World Movie Tour, this was my Netherlands entry, and what an entry it turned out to be. I genuinely wasn't prepared for how much this one would get under my skin.
The setup is deceptively simple. Rex and his girlfriend stop at a busy petrol station during a holiday, she goes to grab drinks, and she never comes back. No scream, no struggle, no dramatic moment. She's just gone. What follows is a film split between two threads: Rex's years-long descent into desperate, consuming obsession, and the quiet, methodical inner life of the man responsible. That structural choice is where The Vanishing earns its reputation. You're not waiting to find out who did it. You know early on. The horror comes from understanding how.
Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu plays that man, and I genuinely struggle to think of a more unsettling screen presence in a film of this type. There's no snarl, no menace, no theatrical villainy. He's a family man. He's curious about himself, almost academically so, which is perhaps the most chilling detail of all. He's done something terrible and he wants to understand his own capacity for it, the same way you might puzzle over a philosophical problem. Donnadieu plays it with such quiet composure that every scene he's in feels like a held breath. It reminded me of the way Se7en (1995) uses its antagonist not as a source of jump scares but as a slow, creeping dread. The monster who makes sense is always scarier than the one who doesn't.
The cinematography leans into that unsettling ordinariness. Wide shots of sun-drenched motorways, mundane petrol station forecourts, ordinary suburban homes. Everything looks exactly as it should. That's the point. The horror here doesn't live in the dark. It lives in the spaces between normal things, in a crowded car park at noon, in a cheerful family having a picnic. The world looks calm. It absolutely is not.
I'll be straight with you though: the pacing is slow. Deliberately, consciously, almost stubbornly slow. Long scenes pass with minimal dialogue. Silences stretch. If you come to this expecting a taut thriller with a brisk tempo, you'll be checking your watch. But I'd argue the pacing isn't a flaw so much as a formal choice, one that forces you to inhabit Rex's exhaustion. By the time you reach the final act, you've sat with his obsession long enough to feel its weight. You understand, on some level, why he makes the choice he makes. You might even make it yourself.
And that ending. I'm not going to describe it. You deserve to arrive at it without warning. What I'll say is this: it's one of the most quietly devastating conclusions I've seen in any film, any genre, any country. It doesn't arrive with a fanfare. It creeps up beside you, settles in, and refuses to leave. I was thinking about it for days afterwards, turning it over, sitting with it. That's rare.
The Vanishing isn't comfortable viewing. It offers no catharsis, no reassurance, no tidy moral resolution. It simply asks you to look at something true and awful about human nature and sit with what that means. As a piece of psychological craft, it's very nearly perfect. The deliberate pacing may keep it from being everyone's cup of tea, and I get that. But for those willing to meet it on its own terms, it delivers one of the most haunting experiences Dutch cinema has to offer.
Four stars. Seek it out. And probably watch something cheerful afterwards.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 1988 | Watched: 2025-07-30
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: STUDIOCANAL PRESENTS Apple TV Channel · Studiocanal Presents Amazon Channel
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Buy: Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · Sky Store · YouTube
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Netherlands: Violet Perfume: Nobody Hears You (2001) · A Cat in Paris (2010) · Monos (2019) · A Land Imagined (2018)
More from the 1980s: Nightmare City (1980) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Style Wars (1983) · Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)
More mystery: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Carnival of Souls (1962) · One Way or Another (1975)
