The Vanishing (2019) Review!!

Synopsis – Three lighthouse keepers on the remote Flannan Isles find a hidden trunk of gold, leading to their mysterious disappearance.

My Take – Despite his gravitas, Gerard Butler has become one of those actors who are stars in mindless action films that finds itself an audience but end up being often mocked at. His last three films, Geostorm, Den of Thieves and Hunter Killer are perfect examples. As a result it was surprising that his latest arrived in limited theaters & VOD without much noise, turns out it’s because this film strips Butler of his action image and instead puts in a vulnerable situation around a real life mystery.

Using Scottish folklore as a speculative framing device for historical fan fiction, the film (formerly known as Keepers) tells the viewer right at the top that this is extremely loosely based on the story of the Flannan Isle Mystery, in which three lighthouse keepers disappeared in 1900, whose fate still remains a mystery. Here, the film uses the mystery to stage a slow, methodical psychological drama-thriller about loneliness, grief, and violence. It’s a dark, unhappy film about dark, unhappy people doing dark, unhappy things.

While the film is far from a perfect film, as it’s pacing is often strangely carried out and has a paper-thin premise that can only be taken so far. However, it delivers everything it promises and more. Perhaps some of its aptitude stems solely from the benefit of low expectations but here, director Kristoffer Nyholm has crafted an eerie mystery that goes down easy and stays with you after the credits roll.

The story follows three lighthouse keepers, James (Gerard Butler), Thomas (Peter Mullan) and Donald (Connor Swindells), who bid everyone goodbye as they are headed to start their six week shift on the remote Isles lighthouse. The three men here are all in various stages of their life. Thomas is a veteran and also the trio’s leader, a responsible man who is haunted by the death of his wife and children, while the able bodied James who is essentially Thomas ’right hand man and also a down-on-his-luck family man who deeply needs the cash, but Donald is still young and just beginning his life as a working man.

While the three are ready to keep their heads down and stick to their work, things take a surprising turn when they splintered rowboat and a dead man wash ashore along with an unopened wooden box. While the three initially agree about not peeking inside the box, they give in to find out that it contains enough gold bars to settle their lives for good. But the moment they decide to keep it, a few other sailors, Locke (Søren Malling) and Boone (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) come in looking for their lost mate and the box, complicating things. But most importantly, can they even trust each other?

Such a premise begs for a supernatural element in the proceedings, but the film takes the incident and turns it into something unexpected. The film is less interested in that story and more interested in its invented tale of greed and doom. I’m always a little divided on attempts to explain unsolved mysteries, but for what it is trying to do, the film mostly succeeds. The film is a slow burn thriller, even with just 101 minutes of a run time, the film is in no hurry to get where you know its going. Director Kristoffer Nyholm and co-writers Joe Bone and Celyn Jones let the isolation settle in before the dead body and its mysterious gold show up. It takes almost a full half-hour for the first signs of conflict to arrive.

Here, director Nyholm makes extensive use of the island, and gets into the moody, windswept hills and cliffs of Eilean Mor, which is portrayed as a beautiful but harsh land that does not suffer weakness. The icy gray of the Atlantic stretches endlessly around the small island, and the wind wails constantly outside. It’s an unforgiving, inhospitable place, and it is completely understandable when things start going sideways it ends up being hell on earth for these three seemingly bonded individuals. But when the sparing violence does arrive, it sure is intense.

Most of it is plain old blunt force trauma: clubbing, stoning, blood flowing, scars cluttering haggard faces. Most of it makes good on the film’s immediate promise of cruel dread. Someone sneaks up on someone else without making a single sound and knocks them unconscious with one swing of a stick. A bluntly foreshadowed act of brutality like this wouldn’t seem out of place in a latter-day Friday the 13th sequel. However, a significant murder is played off-screen in a manner that feels more budgetary than artistic.

However, what truly elevates the film above many of its ilk is its heartfelt desire to chart the morality of both its gruesome violence and destructive hyper-masculinity. There’s a level of care here that reaches significantly further than cheap thrills and bloodshed.

However, there are a few quirks that don’t really work, chief among them being the score. It’s overly aggressive, and, frankly, unneeded. I wish filmmakers understood that not every film needs music—the insistently howling wind is all the soundtrack the film needs. And then there are the accents, which are aggressively Scottish, and hard to understand at times. But most importantly, the film does not quite stick the landing in the final act. The ending is fair, following on logically enough from the preceding events, but it just does not come off as emotionally climactic as some of the earlier scenes.

But the performances are quite solid over all. Peter Mullan grounds his every scene and comes off the strongest as the seasoned timer trying to hold things together. Connor Swindells also does a fine job by holding his own among the other two. But the filmmakers make Gerard Butler as the welcome wildcard. He’s the one that does all the heavy lifting, possibly the biggest surprise of all is that he’s actually up to the task.

Displaying an emotional depth and a subtle restraint not even hinted at by his often loud and obnoxious career, Butler gives perhaps his most emotive performance to date here. He does not seem to have as much to do for the first act. Though he comes into his own once the second act gets going, and he gets to emote more strongly as a man under pressure. On the whole, ‘The Vanishing’ is an effective psychological drama-thriller which despite being a slow burn manages to be mostly effective.