The VanishingMovies like The Vanishing
- Key Features:
- Abduction, Obsession, Psychological thriller, Mystery, Unsolved crime, The unknown, Grief, Persistence, Manipulation, Cat and mouse, Loss, Guilt, European cinema, Slow burn
- Tone:
- serious, suspense-driven, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Thriller enthusiasts, Fans of suspenseful mysteries, Viewers interested in psychological dramas, Fans of European cinema
- Emotional Arc:
- Hope → Desperation → Dread
The Vanishing

The boyfriend of an abducted woman never gives up the search as the abductor looks on.
The Vanishing
Rex and Saskia, a young couple in love, are on vacation. They stop at a busy service station and Saskia is abducted. After three years and no sign of Saskia, Rex begins receiving letters from the abductor.

A family vacation takes a terrifying turn when parents Paul and Wendy discover their young daughter has vanished without a trace. Stopping at nothing to find her, the search for the truth leads to a shocking revelation.

When rancher and single mother of two Maggie Gilkeson sees her teenage daughter, Lily, kidnapped by Apache rebels, she reluctantly accepts the help of her estranged father, Samuel, in tracking down the kidnappers. Along the way, the two must learn to reconcile the past and work together if they are going to have any hope of getting Lily back before she is taken over the border and forced to become a prostitute.

A detective investigates the disappearance of a woman's corpse from a morgue and tries to uncover the cause of her death.

Eight years after the disappearance of Cassandra, some disturbing incidents seem to indicate that she's still alive. Police, parents and Cassandra herself, will try to unravel the mystery of her disappearance.

A charismatic psycho suspected of killing two innocent campers in a cold-blooded double homicide grows increasingly unstable as his suburban empire starts to crack at the foundations.

Jill Conway is trying to rebuild her life after surviving a terrifying kidnapping attempt. Though she is having a difficult time, she takes small steps toward normalcy by starting a new job and inviting her sister, Molly, to move in with her. Returning home from work one morning, Jill discovers that Molly has vanished, and she is certain that the same man who previously abducted her has returned for revenge.

Three lighthouse keepers on an uninhabited island off the coast of Scotland discover something that isn't theirs to keep.

13-year-old Sinikka vanishes on a hot summer night. Her bicycle is found in the exact place where a girl was killed 23 years ago. The dramatic present forces those involved in the original case to face their past.

Newlywed Jennifer is brutally attacked at a dark rest stop. While healing from her injuries, she can’t recall anything from her past, including the ordeal. Her husband, Russell , is just thankful she’s alive and eager to get her home. As he reintroduces her to their secluded mountain estate, Detective Page pursues Jennifer’s assailant — his own daughter went missing and was never found. The same fate now awaits Jennifer, unless someone realizes that her loving caretaker is actually her captor.

In the dead of night, Rebecca wakes in a decrepit precinct, accused of a hit-and-run. But a deadly scuffle reveals a sinister plot. With nowhere to turn, she must uncover the truth before it consumes her. But Rebecca harbors secrets darker than they know.

A young man is found bruised, beaten and stumbling down a secluded road. As the police try to piece together what happened, the convoluted relationship between a young woman and her two suitors gradually emerges.

A man, who years earlier mysteriously abandoned his family and isolated himself in a small northern town, returns for one last chance to reconnect with his troubled daughter. When she goes missing, he risks everything to find her, including exposing the fact that he is becoming invisible.

A woman’s body disappears mysteriously from the morgue without a trace. Police inspector Jaime Peña investigates the strange occurrence with the help of Álex Ulloa, the widower of the missing woman.

Nancy becomes increasingly convinced she was kidnapped as a child. When she meets a couple whose daughter went missing thirty years ago, reasonable doubts give way to willful belief.

When a series of gruesome murders hit Seoul, the Korean investigation police has no choice but to ask help from world-renowned French doctor Alice Launey who developed a revolutionary technique for recognizing bodies. With more corpses on the way and a mysterious organ trafficking ring uncovered, things are about to get more dangerous in the land of the morning calm…

Following the death of her mother, a young woman returns home to Niagara Falls and becomes entangled in the memory of a kidnapping she claims to have witnessed as a child.

A Spanish orchestra conductor deals with the mysterious disappearance of his girlfriend.

Due to a near-fatal accident that has left her incapacitated and depleted of her long-term memory, a temporarily wheelchair-bound woman returns home after being abroad for six years accompanied by her bohemian boyfriend, the apparent cause of the accident. Unable to remember her family or her own childhood, she sets out, with the help of her boyfriend, to find the reason for her leaving all those years ago and quickly discovers her relatives may not be as loving as she’d thought

A woman's carefully constructed life is upended when an unwelcome shadow from her past returns, forcing her to confront the monster she's evaded for two decades.

A man steps out of a park fountain in Ho Chi Minh City with no recollection of who he is or where he came from. As he wanders through the city, piecing together clues to his past, he is relentlessly pursued by mysterious figures.

A woman suddenly disappears. Her fiance then sets out to find her and, in the process, uncovers layers of dark hidden secrets.

A mother, enduringly traumatized by the disappearance of her three-year old daughter 15 years ago, has cut herself off from her ex-husband and son. However, when a troubled young woman with a checkered past enters her life, old psychic wounds painfully resurface, as does the illogical and increasingly irrational hope that the young woman may be the daughter she lost so long ago.

When the quiet and amiable Vann Siegert drifts into town, no one suspects the evil that lies beneath the surface. Despite his easy charm, Vann is merely a reflection of what those he encounters want him to be. Soon, as locals start to disappear, it becomes clear that an eerie subtraction is at work in the sleepy hamlet.

A seemingly innocent man is abducted by a notorious L.A. serial killer, who forces his victims to switch roles with him so that he can enact his own capture, torture and murder.

So-yeon suffers from claustrophobia and inherits a Persian cat when its owner dies. She begins having nightmares and people around her begin dying as she searches for the truth.

A jaded homicide detective has been put on the case of a ruthless killer in the city of Chicago, who leaves a trail of horribly mutilated and dismembered corpses along with perversely ironic biblical quotes.

Mary Walsh delivers boyfriend Kevin to a hospital for routine outpatient surgery. But when Mary returns to take him home, he's mysteriously vanished.

A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.

A girl who lost her father to a serial killer, a detective and a killer are intertwined in a chaotic relationship and are met with an unprecedented series of events.

A young girl wakes up in a casket with a head injury and no memory of her identity. She quickly realizes she was abducted by a serial killer and she must fight to survive.

An obsessed cop is on the trail of a serial killer prowling the streets of Buffalo, N.Y. but when his teenage daughter disappears, he drops any professional restraint to get the killer.

The 19 years old Thomas wakes up in a hospital after three years in a coma. He doesn't remember anything. The psychologist Anna tells him that his family has been murdered and that he is the only survivor of the massacre while his sister Laura is still missing.

For many years, Nathan Harper has had the uneasy feeling that life with his family isn't quite what it seems. As he draws closer to uncovering the truth, he is hunted by assassins, forcing him to flee with his neighbor, Karen, the only person he can trust.

A woman's seaside vacation takes a dark turn when her obsession with a young mother forces her to confront secrets from her past.

A college professor wakes up to find his wife has not returned home, then struggles to understand her disappearance.

Three thugs kidnap Emma, the daughter of a drug kingpin, and have no idea that murderous blood that runs through her veins. As time passes, the unlucky threesome finds themselves in danger from the police, gangsters and their captive.

When his girlfriend goes missing, David must track down her whereabouts after he realizes she's not who she was pretending to be.

The mother of a missing child takes in a lost girl she finds in the woods, but soon begins to wonder if she is even human.

A married woman and her lover plot to kill her husband to make off with the insurance money. However, their attempt to murder him using poisonous fish toxins backfires in surprising ways.

Lewis is an outwardly ordinary guy, but in reality he is hiding an obsession – revenge – against Cathy. Lewis kidnaps Cathy in broad daylight and takes her to his home, where he locks her in a soundproof cell and attempts to extract a dark secret from her past.

Joanna Mills has a successful career but feels her personal life is spinning out of control. She has few friends, an estranged father, and a crazy ex-boyfriend who is stalking her. Joanna begins having terrifying visions of a woman's murder, and it seems that she is the killer's next target. Determined to solve the mystery and escape her apparent fate, Joanna follows her visions to the victim's hometown and finds that some secrets just do not stay buried.

The story of a woman who must find her kidnapped son, navigating a world she doesn't know, on the edge of danger with every heartbeat.

When a kidnapping victim turns up alive after fifteen years, a profiler and a private investigator try to piece together the mystery.

Set in a near-future world where there is no privacy, ignorance or anonymity, our private memories are recorded and crime almost ceases to exist. In trying to solve a series of unsolved murders, Sal Frieland stumbles onto a young woman who appears to have subverted the system and disappeared. She has no identity, no history and no record. Sal realizes it may not be the end of crime but the beginning. Known only as 'The Girl', Sal must find her before he becomes the next victim.

While being interrogated by a police psychiatrist, the near-catatonic Tabitha tries to explain why she and two of her childhood friends are being hunted by a serial killer. The truth that's dying to come out weaves together three tragic secrets from their past. Two of the girls' boyfriends become unwitting targets in their deadly game.

A couple's ailing marriage is put to the test when they are held hostage in an isolated vacation rental by an unseen Voice that commands their every move and threatens harm if they don’t obey.

Telly Paretta is a grieving mother struggling to cope with the loss of her 8-year-old son. She is stunned when her psychiatrist reveals that she has created eight years of memories about a son she never had. But when she meets a man who has had a similar experience, Telly embarks on a search to prove her son's existence, and her sanity.

A man bumps into an old crush and becomes obsessed. After several failed attempts at winning her over, he kidnaps her and holds her captive underneath the animal shelter where he works.

Upon arriving at a remote cabin in the redwoods, Kath and her boyfriend find a mysterious younger couple already there — the rental has apparently been double-booked. They decide to share the cabin with these strangers until the next morning, but her boyfriend disappears with the young woman, which sends Kath in a spiral to find an explanation for their sudden breakup — but the truth is far stranger than she could have imagined.

Unable to process the death of his daughter, Detective Boyd embarks on a hunt for a serial killer who murders according to a brutal tribal ritual: Muti. The only person who can help Boyd is Professor Mackles, an anthropologist who hides an unspeakable secret. The line between sanity and madness thins as Boyd goes deeper into the killer’s world.

While driving through the New Mexico Desert during a rainy night, college students Jim Halsey and his girlfriend Grace Andrews give a ride to a hitchhiker. While in their car, the stranger proves to be a psychopath threatening the young couple with a knife, but Jim successfully throws him out of the car. This sets off a chain of events that will change all of their lives forever.

A contemporary psychological thriller in which a young British couple travelling through the Australian outback become involved with a mysterious and charismatic American whose motive for imposing his friendship upon them becomes increasingly suspect and sinister.

In the town of Cutter, most people keep to themselves. But when John comes home to find his girlfriend missing, he sneaks into his neighbor's house, finding his girlfriend and several other kidnapped people tied up in the basement. When the neighbor come home, John is forced to get out of the house alive and lead the group to safety.

Tricia's husband has been missing for seven years. Her younger sister Callie comes to live with her as the pressure mounts to finally declare him 'dead in absentia'. Tricia is reluctant, always holding out hope, but Callie is practical and wants her to move on. As Tricia sifts through the wreckage and tries to move on with her life, Callie finds herself drawn to an ominous tunnel near the house.

Tenacious homicide detective Cassie Mayweather and her still-green partner are working a murder case, attempting to profile two malevolently brilliant young men: cold, calculating killers whose dark secrets might explain their crimes.

The Stranger is a man with no name, no memory and absolutely nothing left to lose. But when he finds himself hunted by both the FBI and the Russian mob, this amnesiac decides to fight back. Pursuit cannot stop him. Torture will not break him. And with every beating, bullet and betrayal, he’ll remember another piece of the horror that took away his career, his family and his identity.

A congressional candidate questions his sanity after seeing the love of his life, presumed dead, suddenly emerge.

A recently widowed traveler is kidnapped by a cold blooded killer, only to escape into the wilderness where she is forced to battle against the elements as her pursuer closes in on her.

In this darkly romantic ghost story, a woman travels to an isolated cabin where she is stalked by an apparition who inhabits her space as his own. With the unexpected arrival of the woman’s boyfriend, the dark spirit’s haunting grows obsessive. Soon the woman begins to exhibit weirdly irrational behavior as the thin line between sanity and possession begins to unravel. Is she battling her inner demons, or is a much darker presence threatening them all?

Told from the woman's perspective, the story of a couple trying to reclaim the life and love they once knew and pick up the pieces of a past that may be too far gone.

When his wife is killed in a seemingly random incident, Harry, prompted by mysterious visions, journeys to discover the true circumstances surrounding her murder.

A group of college friends reunite for a trip to the forest, but encounter a menacing presence in the woods that's stalking them.

When Claire Spencer starts hearing ghostly voices and seeing spooky images, she wonders if an otherworldly spirit is trying to contact her. All the while, her husband tries to reassure her by telling her it's all in her head. But as Claire investigates, she discovers that the man she loves might know more than he's letting on.

Ichiko works as a private nurse for a family she almost became a part of. While Ichiko cares for the grandmother, she is also a confidant to Motoko, the eldest sister. But one day, Motoko’s younger sister disappears. And the media soon reveal the kidnapper to be Ichiko’s own nephew.

Told from the man's perspective, the story of a couple trying to reclaim the life and love they once knew and pick up the pieces of a past that may be too far gone.

Angela Bennett is a freelance computer systems analyst who tracks down software viruses. At night she hooks up to the internet and chats to others 'surfing the net'. While de-bugging a new high-tech game for a cyber friend, she comes across a top secret program and becomes the target of a mysterious organization who will stop at nothing to erase her identity and her existence, in order to protect the project.

Minnesota, 1990. Detective Bruce Kenner investigates the case of young Angela, who accuses her father, John Gray, of an unspeakable crime. When John unexpectedly and without recollection admits guilt, renowned psychologist Dr. Raines is brought in to help him relive his memories and what they discover unmasks a horrifying nationwide mystery.

When her son's alleged kidnapper is released for lack of solid evidence, a reputable and well-known attorney takes matters into her own hands with unintended and spectacularly disastrous consequences.

An upper-middle-class couple's life is destroyed when their only child is kidnapped and killed. Obsessed with revenge, the couple seizes an opportunity to kidnap the killer.

A woman wakes up in a river. Wounded and without memory, then races to elude mysterious followers and recover from amnesia.

When average, law-abiding citizens suddenly turn to a life of hedonistic behavior and violent crime, Detective Tom Beck is tasked with helping young FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher determine the cause.

A demoted police officer assigned to a call dispatch desk is conflicted when he receives an emergency phone call from a kidnapped woman.

The sins of the past are not forgotten in this chilling suspense thriller. When the first body was discovered, it seemed a coincidence. But now homicide detective Jack Verdon has cause to worry: the victims of a series of brutal sex murders are all his former girlfriends. Suspected by the FBI agent who’s taken over the case and suspended by his captain, Jack must work outside the law if he’s to find the killer, save his future and protect what’s left of his past.

While on a joyride with the headlights turned off, two men hit and kill another man carrying a satchel full of money. The two men decide to take the money and throw the body into a pond and bury the money in a coal hill. The next morning the police discover the body of a kidnapped 12-year blind girl, Melody, in a warehouse near the site of the hit-and-run. They determine that the kidnapper saw the girl's father bringing the ransom to him and also witnessed the hit-and-run and the men stealing the ransom.

An unemployed executive is forced to sell his apartment. When he discovers that he still has the keys, he becomes obsessed with the family that now lives there and decides to recover the life he has lost, at any price.

A working single mother comes home one day to find that her daughter and the nanny have disappeared -- and this is just the beginning of her nightmare.

A woman with no memories runs in fear through the night when she is rescued by a man passing by. They will both have to figure out who her mysterious enemies are and what they want to achieve.

Deep in the woods, a lost hiker stumbles upon the cabin of an erratic and reclusive old man. What starts off as cordial conversation soon turns dangerous as it becomes clear that one or both of them might be hiding a terrifying secret.

When Cecilia's abusive ex takes his own life and leaves her his fortune, she suspects his death was a hoax. As a series of coincidences turn lethal, Cecilia works to prove that she is being hunted by someone nobody can see.

A young couple purchase their new home to start a life together, only to find out the elderly couple next door have other plans for them.

On their road trip through the southwestern desert, Alex and his girlfriend Scarlett arrive in a town in the middle of nowhere and take a room in a mysterious hotel so that Scarlett, who is feeling increasingly ill, can get some rest.

When affluent executive Wayne Hayes is kidnapped by a disgruntled employee and held for ransom in a forest, Wayne’s wife is forced to reckon with the FBI agents as they negotiate with the kidnapper.

After Will Spann's wife suddenly vanishes at a gas station, his desperate search to find her leads him down a dark path that forces him to run from authorities and take the law into his own hands.

A private detective is drawn into a complex murder mystery when he is hired to track down a missing young woman.

Christy returns to her hometown years after a car accident that disfigured her older sister. Haunted by the accident in which she was the driver, she learns that her worst nightmares have either come true ... or are about to.

Jessica and her fiancé Evan just moved from the city into their dream home on a quiet suburban street. Soon after, Jessica catches her seemingly friendly new neighbor, Simon, in a strange lie and can't let her suspicions rest. The danger escalates when Simon lures her inside his home and imprisons Jessica in his secret bunker, meticulously decorated in the idealized style of the 1950's.

With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.

Mysterious events surround the travels of two brothers as they make their way across a remote American landscape. On the surface all seems normal, but what appears to be a simple vacation soon gives way to a dark and complex web of secrets. This is the feature film version of the 2011 short film going by the same name.

When Environmental Protection Agency inspector Steve Malone travels to a remote military base in order to check for toxic materials, he brings his family along for the ride. After arriving at the base, his teenage daughter Marti befriends Jean Platt, daughter of the base's commander, General Platt. When people at the base begin acting strangely, Marti becomes convinced that they are slowly being replaced by plant-like aliens.

When Lisa's younger sister suddenly disappears without a trace, she returns to her home village to search for the missing girl on her own. But before she can follow up a real lead, a dead girl is found by the river.

Rich entrepreneur Rebecca Zuin has died from an alleged heart attack, raising suspicions on the part of a police inspector after her body disappears from the morgue. When her handsome young husband becomes a suspect, he starts thinking she may have faked her death to sadistically torment him.

Based on the real-life experiences of Ed Horman. A conservative American businessman travels to Chile to investigate the sudden disappearance of his son after a military takeover. Accompanied by his son's wife he uncovers a trail of cover-ups that implicate the US State department which supports the dictatorship.

A depressed housewife who learns her husband was killed in a car accident the day previously, awakens the next morning to find him alive and well at home, and then awakens the day after to a world in which he is still dead.

A woman reports that her young daughter is missing, but there seems to be no evidence that she ever existed.

In 1997 the close-knit Anderson family vanished from their home without a trace. No bodies were ever found and no explanation satisfied curiosity. For 17 years the house has remained undisturbed...until now. This eerily expert frightener is further enlivened by terrific performances from ‘Suits’/’Arrow’ star Neal McDonough and SILENT HILL/THE TALL MAN/TIDELAND’s Jodelle Ferland.

Two fugitives land in hot water when they take a hostage who poses a threat to their well-being.

Sebastiano teaches high school gym classes and coaches swimming. He’s got a job, a girlfriend, and a pretty normal life. But as young Martin starts to infiltrate Sebastiano’s life, his world will get turned upside down. Eerie from the first frame, this Hitchcockian thriller portrays sexual obsession with terrifying realism.

