When Stanley Kubrick called The Vanishing the most horrifying movie he’d ever seen, he wasn’t talking about gore or monsters. Kubrick reportedly told the film’s director, George Sluizer, that the film rattled him so much he couldn’t sleep, which is remarkable considering this is the same man who made The Shining. What did him in — just as it still does audiences today — is how real the horror feels. There are no haunted houses and no atypical masked killers. What the movie portrays is just a roadside stop, a missing woman, and the terrifying idea that evil can look completely normal.
The movie, adapted from Tim Krabbé’s novella The Golden Egg, was produced and released in the Netherlands in 1988, under the title Spoorloos. All in all, the narrative follows Rex Hofman (Gene Bervoets) and his girlfriend, Saskia Wagter (Johanna ter Steege), on a summer drive through France. They stop at a gas station, where she goes inside to buy drinks but never comes back out. Simply put, that’s all it takes. No dramatic soundtrack, no flashing lights — just the slow realization that Rex’s girlfriend has vanished without a trace.
‘The Vanishing’ Leaned into The Horror of Ordinary Evil
Unlike typical thriller/horror films, The Vanishing doesn’t keep viewers guessing who the villain is. Right from the onset, it introduces the audience to Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), a seemingly respectable family man and easy-going chemistry teacher, who also happens to be a meticulous predator. On the outside, he’s polite, even ‘casual wave’ forgettable. But behind the average Joe façade, he’s rehearsing how to chloroform strangers without breaking a sweat. That disconnect between what he looks like and what he does is where the film messes with one’s head. Watching Raymond’s quiet preparations is a low-key, terrifying experience. He would time how long chloroform would knock him out and put on fake arm slings to look vulnerable. These scenes may seem mundane on the surface, but they relentlessly creep under one’s skin and make viewers think: if this calm, calculated person exists, how many others blend in around us?
Even the smaller details increase the levels of anxiety viewers experience while watching the film. Think scenes like Saskia’s haunting dream of being trapped inside a golden egg, the scene where she and Rex bury coins by a tree as a cute couple ritual, or the tunnel where he briefly loses sight of her. Ordinarily, none of these moments screams “this is a thriller/horror film.” However, when she disappears, each instance suddenly becomes quite important, as if the film had been leaving breadcrumbs for the audience all along.
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Why Most Viewers Can’t Shake ‘The Vanishing’ Off
The thing about The Vanishing that keeps most viewers hooked is Rex’s inability to simply let go of the woman he lost. Where most people would have surrendered to the silence of unanswered questions, Rex chooses the harder road. He keeps searching, keeps hoping, keeps pressing against the impossible. Viewers watch him pour years of his life into creating posters, engaging in conversations with strangers, and endlessly grasping for even the smallest clue. And after a while, it stops feeling like determination and begins to feel like obsession. So when the man responsible finally reappears, it doesn’t come across as a cheap Hollywood twist. Instead, it lands with this eerie sense of inevitability — as if Rex’s entire journey had been pushing him toward that exact moment. For viewers, it felt like watching someone walk into a storm they know is about to break, but being powerless to call them back.
And then there’s the ending, which is what really sets this film apart. Most thrillers give audiences something to hold onto in the last act: maybe a rescue, perhaps a punishment, or even just an answer that feels solid. The Vanishing refuses to do all of that. It denies viewers closure in the same way Rex has been denied for years. What fans are left with instead is a claustrophobic series of events. It’s no wonder people like Kubrick not only persist with the fact that it was truly terrifying, but also lose sleep over it several decades later.
Still haven’t seen The Vanishing? Stream it on Apple TV+, but don’t expect sleep to come easily afterward.
