The Vanishing (1993)

Directed by: George Sluizer | 109 minutes | thriller | Actors: Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, Nancy Travis, Sandra Bullock, Park Overall, Maggie Linderman, Lisa Eichhorn, George Hearn, Lynn Hamilton

Barney is happily married to Helene (Lisa Eichhorn) and his ten-year-old daughter Denise (Maggie Linderman) adores him. Still, he makes elaborate preparations to kidnap a woman and transport it in his car to his country house by a lake. At a gas station, he meets Diane Shaver who is passing through with her boyfriend Jeff. While she is shopping at the store, Jeff is waiting for her in their car. If he thinks it takes too long, he goes looking for her, but no one knows what happened to her or where she has gone.

It’s three years later and Jeff is still looking for Diane. Every month he refreshes the posters with her image that he has hung everywhere and hopes against his better judgment that someone can tell him what happened to her. In particular, the uncertainty about her fate and the true circumstances of her disappearance have turned him into a spiritual wreck. Then he meets Rita Baker (Nancy Travis) who takes care of him and with whom he moves in together. Just as he’s ready to let go of his obsession with Diane to give his relationship with Rita a fair shot, Barney contacts him.

There are quite a few things wrong with this remake, such as the very wrong, very cheap music, the vulgar ending that deviates from the original story mainly to please the audience and the fact that the film is too boring to be labeled ‘thriller’. to get. The scenario also far from contributes to an intriguing story, but limps from event to event. And the sense of uneasiness that must overwhelm the viewer by Barney’s creepiness is simply absent, at most your vicarious shame over so much clumsiness creeps in. What is good about the film is the acting of Kiefer Sutherland. Not spectacular, but with the scarce resources at his disposal, he certainly isn’t doing badly. It therefore says enough that despite his good acting performance, his obsession is not tangible.

The supporting role of Maggie Linderman as the teenage daughter who is a complete idol of her father is also fine and the images of the lake in particular with truly fairytale mist patches under a starry sky are beautiful. And very funny is the clumsy way in which Barney carries out his first kidnapping attempts, scaring the women as a kind of dirty man à la Kees van Kooten. But the film is nothing like a golden egg, more like an empty shell.