Don’t see it: The Vanishing

When I was visiting my mother, we decided to watch some television and settled on our best choice for the evening, the movie the Vanishing. During the first half of the movie, I couldn’t decide whether it was a good bad movie or just a bad bad movie.

After about an hour (including commercials) I found out it was just really an awful movie. Still, we watched it to the end, and my mother and I were sort of amused. So maybe that does make it a good bad movie? I’ll tell you a little bit what this movie is about, so you can make up your own mind about whether or not it is awful and if you should watch it.

The Vanishing is the 1993 movie about a guy whose girlfriend one day disappears at a gas station and he cannot let go. In fact, he becomes obsessed with wanting to know what happened to her. Years after the event, he is still doing nothing but following leads about her disappearance.

He does find a new girlfriend, but he only pretends that he’s over the dead girlfriend. He goes so far as to make up he’s joined the resistance army, just so he can sneak of to his cabin where he has a serial killer type wall full with clues.

Meanwhile, we, the audience, already know which creepy guy made her disappear. We see him all the time, following the boyfriend’s obsession from a distance. When the boyfriend stops obsessing, creepy guy makes contact and proposes to him he will show him what happened to his girlfriend.

The only way for the boyfriend to find out, is to experience exactly what the girlfriend experienced. Stupid obsessed boyfriend agrees to this. This means he is willingly drinking coffee spiced with a sedative.

Next thing he knows he wakes up in a coffin. The creepy guy has buried him alive. So now he knows what happened to his girlfriend, and he will die a horrible death himself. Or not? Strangely enough this movie actually has a happy ending.

Vanished is full of bad early nineties hair and clothes. The obsessed boyfriend is played by Kiefer Sutherland, and the girlfriend is played by Sandra Bullock. Why oh why did they agree to take part in this movie? It is sooooooo bad. I guess they did not realize, or seeing how long ago it was, they didn’t have much of a choice yet.

I know I started my post saying you should make up your own mind about seeing this. I’ve changed my mind, and just want to give you a stern warning: Don’t see it!