The Vanishing (1988)

A patient thriller laced with lingering dread.

Directed by: George Sluizer
Cinematography by: Toni Kuhn

Country: Netherlands/France/West Germany

Genre: Drama/Thriller/Mystery/Horror

Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer’s psychological mystery, The Vanishing, contains very few “scary” scenes, but it’s legitimately horrifying. Based on Tim Krabbé’s novella, The Golden Egg, Sluizer spends a chunk of the film painting a disturbing portrait of the warped logic of a detached, homicidal sociopath named Raymond.

By day a chemistry teacher and family man, the budding serial killer decides that since he once saved a young girl from drowning - an act of goodness - he’s justified to attempt committing an act of malicious evil: murder. He goes about practicing his plans to abduct a random stranger with spine-chilling normalcy, as if it’s a mundane daily routine, rehearsing his movements and dialogue like a play before opening night, diligently recording his time and pulse rate after each run-through.

Never a second thought in his mind, he even includes his wife and two daughters, oblivious of his intentions, in on his depraved preparations. Eating dinner one evening outside of their rural home, Raymond challenges the three to scream as loud as they can as a kind of game, and the next day questions his neighbors whether they heard anything suspicious; they respond no, and Raymond knows he has extra leeway committing the murder at his home.

Told in segments, the film is a clinical slow-burn, executed with the precision of a brain surgeon. With not a jump scare in sight, Sluizer spends his time building a citadel of suspense under an ever-darkening sky of growing dread, reflecting the true-to-life horror of peeling back the skin of a societal chameleon and discovering a remorseless killer underneath, and the cold fear of realizing that you’re in over your head against a threat that seems to have pre-calculated your every move.

Distributed by: The Criterion Collection