The Vanishing (Spoorloos)

At the 1989 Sydney Film Festival, George Sluizer’s little-known independent film, Spoorloos (The Vanishing), was an unexpected hit, winning the festival’s audience award and gaining accolades at other international film festivals. The Vanishing has earned a reputation as a psychological thriller that shocked audiences with its unexpected twist ending. This is the first book-length study to examine The Vanishing as a film that complements and broadens generic expectations of psychological horror cinema. It delves into The Vanishing’s production history, including Sluizer’s adaptation of the film screenplay from the novella The Golden Egg (1984) by Dutch author Tim Krabbé. Beyond exploring Sluizer’s filmmaking style and The Vanishing’s place in Dutch cinema, this book analyses how the film’s plot, themes and symbolic imagery connect it to topics prevalent in prominent sub-genres of horror cinema, including the serial-killer sub-genre that rose to prominence in the late 1980s. Its themes are also echoed in contemporary films associated with arthouse cinema, which are variously dubbed ’post-horror’ and ’elevated horror’. The book will illuminate The Vanishing’s close associations with modern-day cinema, arguing that its particular type of psychological horror has consistently resonated with audiences in the decades since its release.