While on a vacation trip in France, a young couple stops for a break at a roadside service station, where his girlfriend mysteriously disappears. A film by George Sluizer, starring Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, Johanna ter Steege, Gwen Eckhaus, Bernadette Le Saché, Tania Latarjet, Lucille Glenn, Roger Souza, Pierre Forget, and Didier Rousset.

Young Dutch couple Rex Hofman (Gene Bervoets) and Saskia Wagter (Johanna ter Steege) are on a road trip in France. While driving through a tunnel, Saskia shares a recurring nightmare with Rex: she’s trapped alone inside a golden egg, floating endlessly through space. This time, however, she describes another golden egg drifting through space, believing that if the two eggs were to collide, everything would end. Suddenly, their car stalls in the middle of the tunnel, having run out of gas.

Rex exits the car and decides to walk back through the tunnel, but Saskia fears they might get hit by other vehicles if they walk in the darkness. She grows frustrated when she can’t find the flashlight, and Rex leaves despite her pleas for him to wait.

When Rex returns with a jerrycan of gasoline, he becomes alarmed to find the car empty with no sign of Saskia. After filling up the tank, he drives through the tunnel and finds Saskia waiting outside, flashlight in hand. She gets into the car, visibly upset, and they continue their journey in silence until they reach a service station.

The two make up after Rex apologizes for leaving Saskia alone in the tunnel. After expressing his love for her, Rex watches as Saskia goes into the service station shop to buy beer and coffee. She never returns.

French chemistry professor Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) appears to lead a seemingly happy life with his wife Simone (Bernadette Le Saché) and their teenage daughters Denise (Tania Latarjet) and Gabrielle (Lucille Glenn).

However, Raymond also leads a secret life. He buys an isolated old house in Saint-Côme, where he conducts experiments with chloroform on himself. Using a stopwatch, he measures how quickly it induces unconsciousness and how long the effects last. He meticulously rehearses his abduction methods, including the technique of using a chloroform-soaked handkerchief to subdue his victims.

Raymond’s initial abduction plan, which involves trying to get women to voluntarily enter his car, miserably fails on multiple occasions. He then changes his approach, pretending to need help attaching a trailer to his car. However, his physically strong appearance makes this ruse unconvincing to the women. Raymond eventually realizes that he must appear weak, so he poses as a man with a broken arm and waits at a rest area outside of town.

Three years after Saskia’s disappearance, Rex and his new girlfriend Lieneke (Gwen Eckhaus) visit Bar des Beaux Arts in Nîmes. The film reveals that Rex has been receiving mysterious postcards from the abductor, each inviting him to different locations.

Bar des Beaux Arts is a charming café and bar located in the heart of Nîmes, France. It is situated at 17 Place aux Herbes, 30000 Nîmes, and is known for its cozy and casual atmosphere, making it a popular spot for both locals and tourists. The bar offers a variety of drinks, including cocktails, beer, and wine, along with food options such as brunches, tartines, and sandwiches. It features outdoor seating, which is particularly enjoyable due to its proximity to the historic Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Castor Cathedral.

He has traveled to every suggested place, hoping to finally meet the person who can reveal what happened to Saskia. For three years, these postcards have kept Rex obsessed with the possibility that Saskia might still be alive and living happily somewhere, though in his heart, he accepts that she may no longer be alive.

While sitting at the café, Rex scans the crowd, hoping to recognize someone from the gas station where Saskia disappeared. Unknown to him, Raymond, the abductor, is watching him from the second floor of a nearby building. Rex confides in Lieneke that his greatest fear is that the postcards will suddenly stop coming, or that the abductor might die, leaving him forever uncertain about Saskia’s fate.

Lieneke takes Rex to Bois Vieux in Anduze, the destination Rex and Saskia had planned to visit three years earlier. As they walk up the hill toward the house, Rex experiences a hallucination – he sees himself driving up the hill with Saskia in the car. He races after the phantom vehicle to the hilltop, only to find an empty house. There, he slips into a daydream where he finds himself trapped inside a golden egg floating in space, reunited with Saskia. Rex interprets this vision as a sign that he’s getting closer to discovering what happened to her.

Anduze is a commune located in the Gard department of the Occitanie region in southern France. It is situated at the foot of the Cevennes range, in the limestone plateau of the Languedoc scrublands. The town is nestled between two hills, Saint-Julien and Peyremale, and serves as a strategic gateway to the Cevennes. Anduze is known for its rich history, cultural heritage, and natural beauty, offering attractions such as hiking trails, historical landmarks, and traditional pottery.

Written and directed by Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer and adapted from Tim Krabbé’s 1984 novel “Het Gouden Ei” (The Golden Egg), “SPOORLOOS” (The VANISHING) is a psychological thriller that centers on a man’s obsessive quest to uncover the truth behind his girlfriend’s mysterious disappearance from a gas station.

George Sluizer employs a unique narrative structure, weaving together background stories in non-chronological order, while masterfully maintaining suspense and an unsettling atmosphere throughout the film.

From the begining, Sluizer reveals crucial information to the audience – we know both the abductor and the victim. As the story unfolds, flashbacks delve deeper into the abductor’s character, showing his meticulous planning and practice sessions before committing the actual crime. Despite being an amateur who makes several mistakes, he succeeds in an almost darkly comedic way that feels like a twisted game of fate.

What makes the film particularly chilling is its realism. It forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: sociopaths live among us, indistinguishable from ordinary people, concealing their dark and horrifying secrets beneath a veneer of normalcy.

The protagonist’s descent into obsession drives the narrative forward, as his desperate need to uncover the truth about his girlfriend’s disappearance pushes him to risk everything. While I could speculate that the story would end tragically for the protagonist, it’s still bizarrely terrifying when that scene actually arrives. SPOORLOOS rightfully deserves its place among the greatest thriller films ever made.

SPOORLOOS premiered at Montreal Film Festival in August 1988. The film was theatrically released in the Netherlands on 27 October 1988, and later released in France on 20 December 1989, under the title “L’Homme qui voulait savoir” (“The Man Who Wanted to Know”).

The VANISHING was first released on Blu-ray on 28 October 2014, as part of the Criterion Collection. This release features a new digital transfer created from a 4K restoration of the original film, with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack, presented in 1080p resolution in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio. The Blu-ray includes interviews with director George Sluizer and actress Johanna ter Steege, as well as a trailer. Additionally, it comes with an essay by critic Scott Foundas and a new cover design by Lucien S. Y. Yang. The restoration was done using a wet-gate ARRISCAN film scanner, with manual removal of dirt and debris, and the audio was remastered at 24-bit from the original 35mm magnetic track.