Movie Review: The Vanishing (1993)

Directed by George Sluizer

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

The 1988 Dutch original, Spoorloos: Rex (Gene Bervoets) and Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) are on vacation when they have a spat. Stopping at a roadside convenience store, Saskia mysteriously disappears. Rex searches and searches but Saskia has seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth. Years later, local academic Raymond (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) telephones Rex saying that he knows what happened to Saskia contacts him. After a mysterious car ride with the apprehensive Rex and the coolly evil Raymond, the academic says that her disappearance was an experiment in evil he undertook after his daughter proclaimed him a “hero” after saving a drowning child. Rex finds out what happened to Saskia – and the audience stumbles out of the theater as if kicked in the stomach. 

The 1993 American remake, same director: Jeff (Kiefer Sutherland) and Diane (a young Sandra Bullock) are on vacation when they have a spat. Stopping at a roadside convenience store, Diane mysteriously disappears. Jeff searches and searches but Diane has seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth. Years later, local academic Barney (Jeff Bridges) telephones Jess saying he knows what happened to Diane. After a mysterious car ride with the apprehensive Jeff and the coolly evil Barney, the academic says that her disappearance was an experiment in evil he undertook after his daughter proclaimed him a “hero” after saving a drowning child. Jeff finds out what happened to Diane – but in the meantime, his hard-as-nails waitress girlfriend Rita (Nancy Travis) has followed Jeff’s tracks, and turns the tables on the professor. The film ends with laughter and smiles.



The American remake of The Vanishing, while made by its original auteur George Sluizer, just could not get any respect. While Stanley Kubrick proclaimed the original as being superior to his The Shining (1980) for overall tone he wanted to make, the American remake, many thought, had watered down the grim finality of the original. Obviously paving the way for the films of director Michael Hanenke and the later, brutal horror films from France, the original was unapologetic in its finality. Its intention was not to send away viewers lightly entertained, but to alert them to the very real casual nature of absolute evil.

For the first time, Julie Kirgo in her liner notes to this Twilight Time Blu-Ray release, limited to 3,000 copies, comes up with many arguments that I completely disagree with. She notes that many were put off by the watering down of the source material, director Sluizer honored the American aesthetic of paring up the retiring, intellectual hero (Sutherland) with a no-nonsense blue collar waitress girlfriend (Travis), in this case literally able to see the forest for the trees – and winning a happy ending in the meantime.

This reviewer welcomes the fact in the remake that the villainous Barney (Bridges) being portrayed as sloppy and inept. His previous attempt at an abduction ends with him falling prey to his own devices! I will even say that’s its good to see such a pompous, overbearing villain brought to his comeuppance on the part of some ingenious quick thinking on the part of Travis.

The least alert viewer will notice that all the additional material with Travis, however, makes little sense. The authorities come up with nothing at the convenience store after Bridges leaves some mighty incriminating evidence in the men’s restroom (hint: He took a thing or two from serial killer Ted Bundy’s playbook). Intelligent little girls, such as Barney’s daughter takes rides from complete strangers in battered cars. Rita comes up with some very clever deductions to what has occurred to Jeff and his exact location. And one too many characters knowingly quaff drugged coffee in order to know what happened.

Kirgo nails the fact that convenience stores and rest stops are notoriously unpleasant places where there are too many people and provides too many opportunities for the “wrong” people. The remake, however, is just a bit contrived, in spite of her assertion that Sluizer adapted an “American aesthetic” in order to make this decision. It is, after all in the Dutch original.

This reviewer is not saying to skip 1993’s The Vanishing. Avoid the original, and forgive some lapses in logic, especially towards the end, and you’ll have a good ol’ American time at the movies. The Blu-Ray includes the film’s original theatrical trailer.