The Vanishing, or Spoorloos, is a crime thriller constantly on the verge of becoming a horror movie, delivering one of the most disturbing endings of all time. The Dutch film revolves around a couple, Rex and Saskia, whose promising bike holiday is disrupted when Saskia stops at a gas station to buy drinks and disappears without a trace. Three years later, Rex is still looking for her and is contacted by a stranger who claims to know Saskia’s whereabouts.

The brilliant movie inspired an American remake directed by George Sluizer himself, the director of the original film, gathering renowned movie stars such as Kiefer Sutherland and Jeff Bridges in the lead roles. However, it lacks the dreadful mood of Spoorloos and its cold, nearly impersonal tone, which leads up to an unnerving twist.

The Vanishing Is the Perfect Example of a Slow Burn
Argos Films

The Vanishing is committed to constantly playing with the viewers expectations, never giving away more than the necessary. There are no clues scattered across the narrative, nor are there multiple storylines playing out like traditional crime thrillers; it all comes down to a chance encounter that changes everything. Then an arranged encounter reconstitutes the mystery backwards. In the film, chance is the main character, and it has wicked plans for Rex and Saskia. The Vanishing works as a reminder that we are vulnerable at all times, regardless of the circumstances; one might cross a war zone on foot and get away unscathed, just to trip over a whole and die a minute later.

To illustrate that, a sequence at the beginning features the couple engaging in a heated argument after the car runs out of gas, causing Rex to storm out of the car to search for help by himself, leaving Saskia alone in a pitch-black tunnel. When he returns the day after, Saskia is nowhere to be seen. Before panicking, he drives to the end of the tunnel where she patiently awaits; Rex left her in a completely vulnerable position, enabling plenty of awful possibilities to happen. Yet nothing happened, and thus he faces the incident with absolute indifference. A few hours later, Saskia goes to a gas station to buy drinks and never returns. It’s just as painfully ironic as it is terrifying.

Related: The 10 Most Chilling Quotes from Crime Thrillers

The Vanishing delivers one build-up after the other until the final five minutes, when all the pieces fall into place. It’s a slow-burn thriller narrative in its most traditional form. The movie keeps the audience at its mercy in a painfully anxiety-inducing narrative. All this works in favor of putting the viewers in Rex’s shoes: soon enough, accepting to meet a stranger who claims to know your missing girlfriend’s whereabouts no longer seems like such a bad idea.

The Vanishing’s Ending Shocks Like a Horror Movie Without a Drop of Blood
Argos Films

The Vanishing opens with Saskia describing a recurring nightmare of her, in which she finds herself inside an egg unable to get out, floating all alone in space. Only this time, there was another egg drifting far away, and the possibility of the two eggs colliding suggested the end of it all. Rewatching this scene knowing what will happen to Saskia immediately sends a shiver down the spine, and initiates a discussion regarding chance against fate.

The Vanishing is the cinematic equivalent of the saying “curiosity killed the cat.” After years of searching for Saskia, Rex is contacted by Raymond, a stranger who claims to know what happened to Saskia: he can either walk away and live under the shadow of eternal uncertainty, or experience things just as Saskia and embrace the truth no matter how awful it is. It’s difficult to judge Rex’s decision or take him for a stupid man; deep in his heart, he already knows Saskia is dead, but he’s passed the point of living on with the burden of not knowing the truth.

Whether by a final gesture of love, symbolized by Rex burying two coins under a tree just like he did with Saskia at the beginning of the movie, or by giving in entirely to his curiosity, he voluntarily drinks Raymond’s mixture of coffee and sleeping pills, in a last-minute decision that changes the movie completely. Next thing he knows, Rex is buried in a box underground, where he will meet a slow, painful death just like Saskia did. Throwing back to the dream about the egg, it’s almost as if Saskia lived on until the very moment Rex joined her, drifting away in the dark completely alone until another egg entered her collision course.

Related: The 15 Best Slow-Burn Psychological Thrillers of All Time

The Vanishing Portrays Evil as a Gradual Process
Argos Films

The character of Raymond adds to The Vanishing’s dreadful mood by portraying evil as a process that demands patience and is utterly inevitable. After watching Rex calmly pleading for Saskia’s kidnapper to meet him, Raymond accepts it in a surge of mercy. Evil wants to be seen, and Raymond finds in Rex someone who would never challenge his condescendence. His confession is cold and unnerving, and the way he genuinely thinks he’s doing Rex a favor is all the more infuriating.

Raymond is one of the most disturbing villains of any thriller because he sees evil as a duty; there’s no passion or fury in the cruelty of his acts — to him, it’s just the way it should be. After saving a girl from drowning, Raymond is perceived as a hero by his family and struck by the idea that a hero must be capable of harsh gestures. He calls up the concept of yin and yang, and to balance the best possible thing a person could, that is, saving a human life, Raymond should now be able to do the most horrible thing possible.

The roots of evil need purpose to bloom, and what makes Raymond so scary is how he seems to have waited for this moment his whole life. A good deed prompted him to present Saskia with a fate worse than death. Similarly, he acts like a Good Samaritan with Rex on the same terms. It’s all a pretext to be cruel. Raymond accepts his violent tendencies as a necessary evil, which only makes The Vanishing’s chilling ending all the more distressing.

Stream The Vanishing on The Criterion Channel