George Sluizer's 1988 psycho-chiller dripfeeds its terror straight into your bloodstream, icy pellet by icy pellet. Dutch couple Rex and Saskia (Gene Bervoets and Johanna Ter Steege) are touring France. They stop at a service station. Saskia disappears. And that's it. The rest of the movie is made up of Rex's creeping anxiety, escalating obsession and encroaching dread, the horrific truth of what really happened that fateful day slowly coming to bear.
DVD Extras:
Trailer, director's filmography, picture gallery.Most remembered for its phobia-tapping, truly haunting climax, The Vanishing signs off with a gut punch after ceaselessly clawing at the nerves. Hollywood was certainly impressed, luring Sluizer into helming a (vastly inferior) remake with Kiefer Sutherland and Bridget Fonda. Shame the disc contains no extras to explain what went wrong.
