I can't understand how anyone could say the first 100 minutes of this film are of no merit whatever. Surely the ending that every viewer finds so profoundly unsettling only works because the rest of this beautifully crafted film leads us to expect a quite different ending. 'Spoorloos' is not only the most genuinely chilling movie I've ever seen, it is a good contender for Best Film Of the 80s. Its feeble Hollywood remake ('The Vanishing') should serve as a warning to all European film-makers of the crassness of LA studio executives.