13 Scariest Horror Movie Moments, #5
#5: Rex Finds Out in The Vanishing (Spoorloos)
Most people are familiar with the 1993 crapfest remake, bit it’s the 1988 original The Vanishing (or Spoorloos) that deserves all the attention.
The scene I’m referring to is of course the last scene, a true chiller where it’s hard to imagine being in any predicament worse that that one. Again, this movie is completely without gore and overt violence, but it’s deeply affecting, because it speaks to all of us.
What is the price of knowledge? The Bible posited that question long, long, ago, and we’re still asking it today.
Rex and his lovely wife Saskia are vacationing in France when she walks into a gas station…and never comes back. This is wonderfully and eerily done. I still get chills if I wait in the car while my husband walks into the gas station, and almost always end up running in after him.
Rex spends the next three years obsessed with finding out what happened to her, and why. It gets to the point where his love for her, his missing her, is not the point or even a consideration…it’s his all-consuming need to know.
This film works amazingly well in atmosphere and character. The viewer knows nearly all along who the kidnapper/murderer is, and still, you’re left feeling tense about what’s going to happen.
Rex finally meets the alarmingly affable family man who committed the crime, and quickly learns why it happened. (The reason the man did it is almost as frightening as the final scene.) Rex finds out the why—usually the larger mystery in life—but he doesn’t find out the what, and he can’t stand it. He agrees to take a sleeping pill offered by the murderer with the promise that Rex will soon know everything.
When Rex wakes up, he finds out everything, all right. He pays the ultimate price but at least the mental torture of not knowing is over. Now it’s time for a new torture to begin…
Yeah, great movie that really stays with you. But did you ever see the American remake? Kiefer Sutherland, Jeff Bridges as the killer and Nancy Travis as the new girlfriend. My God, what an embarrassment!
Basically, you can’t give Americans that ending, so suddenly in act three, Nancy Travis becomes a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Wonder Woman, and charges in to save the day.
It was a total train wreck. Imagine at the end of the third Matrix movie we find out that Trinity wasn’t really dead, she was just pretending so Neo wouldn’t worry about her, and the machine war is all a big misunderstanding – they just want to be friends. So there’s a big party, and everyone’s hugging everyone else. Oh, and Burt Reynolds comes by and delights the crowd with humorous anecdotes drawn from his years in Hollywood.
I mean why bother remaking something like this if the very things that drew you to it have to go?
Hmm, yeah, okay, I guess you did see the remake.
D’oh!
:-0
Hi John! Thanks for the awesome post! I know exactly what you mean. Remakes infuriate me. In fact, I’m going to write a post about it soon, because SO MANY remakes of excellent horror movies are scheduled for 2006, which I know they’ll mess up. Why can’t they just think of new ideas instead of messing up old ones?