The Vanishing (1988)
In the beginning of the film there is a small detail that kept me puzzled for the entire runtime, and it never becomes resolved - unlike most of the rest of the narrative, and it turns out to be a vital key. It ended up being the type of film that needed to roam around in my head for a while before I could see how deeply unsettling and disturbing it really is. Because right after finishing it, it definitely felt like a fully resolved closed thing.
The detail I am talking about is when Rex leaves the tunnel to get gas, leaving his scared wife behind in the dark, there is a very brief sinister smile on his face. It is a small insertion of doubt on his motivations for the rest of the film. His obsessive search would logically be motivated by love for his wife, but there is a nagging feeling that is not really it. He shares some of the inner darkness with the murderer, cannot deal with the not knowing as he isn’t driven by love, but guilt and shame of what he did and perhaps his own deeper darker nature.
This was really a film that needed time for me, as I didn’t thought that highly about it while watching it, as everything gets foreshadowed and resolved quite cleanly in the narrative sense. The vital minor details only materialized the day after sealing it is a unique piece of psychological horror. The mystery of the vanishing may be solved, but the inner darkness of everyday men is left without a safe explanation.
Rating: 4.5