Read my no spoilers review here if you haven’t watched this movie yet.

The Vanished was a rollercoaster of emotions from start to finish. From the escaped convict to the child exploitation and to the major twist at the end that I never saw coming, it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time.

Covering the story quickly a couple and their 10 year old daughter go to a campsite to spend Thanksgiving when just a few hours after they’ve arrived their daughter goes missing. Thus begins a wild hunt to try and find her which uncovers a world of child exploitation, paedophilia, and adultery.

But the big shock of this film was that there was no daughter. Well, there was a daughter but she died years before and the parents actually have a disorder which makes them believe that their daughter is still with them.

It seems the parents end up in a loop of going through grief of their daughter’s passing from believing she is still there, to her going missing, to them trying to find her and finally to them accepting that she is gone. However this time it involves a campsite and strangers who end up in an entanglement of lies and deceit and unfortunately death.

From the start I felt there was something wrong with this couple. They seemed far too irrational and over the top with the way they were acting and the way that they reacted to the people around them. It just seemed strange to me, I didn’t like their demeanour or the way they conducted themselves. However some of their irrational thought processes could be explained, for example, the wife being angry at the female camper next to their RV makes more sense when you realise her husband had cheated in the past.

I did find it quite shocking when they started killing off the characters especially as I didn’t expect it, and it just seem too far-fetched. Now with hindsight I know that they clearly have a lot of mental issues between them but the way they just decided to stab a random camper because they thought he had their child with no proof or evidence was crazy to me.

I really enjoyed this movie because it did a different take on the usual child kidnapping storyline that we seen in many movies prior. It was interesting because the ending was not something that I ever expected to happen and when the child pornography man was killed and had the blame placed on him for what happened to their daughter I thought that, that would be the ending. I thought that, that was where this movie was going but for it to actually be that she was dead for a number of years just blew me away.

I would love to know your thoughts on this movie. For me, it kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. It had a lot of twists and turns which kept me interested and engaged and the ending was something that I would’ve never expected to happen. I really enjoy these sorts of movies that really catch you off guard and make you think things are going one way and then they suddenly go another. I don’t feel this movie made it too obvious what its main twist was going to be either so it wasn’t like I could immediately think ‘oh yes it’s this’ and then find out I was right later. It completely caught me off guard and was such a fascinating ending.

What do you think of The Vanished?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding