The Vanished (2006) User Reviews (3)

Old school mentality in modern day horror approach.

[lost-in-limbo · 6/10 · 1 July 2018]

Remember those HK supernatural comedies from the 1980s through to 1990s involving vampire children, or children spirits? The mid-2000's Japanese low-budget film THE VANISHED is something along those lines, well at least those sub-plots involving mischievous children haunting their parents. Actually... are they vampires, could be ghosts, maybe demons, or possibly demonic vampire ghosts? Anyhow the tone has more in common with modern J-horror, where instead of the broad comedy; it's heavy on brooding horror and subtle mystery. A freelance writer for a trashy magazine finds himself investigating the real deal when he's given a strange case of a dead child missing internal organs, and while investigating the body at the morgue he encounters something unexplainable. This leads him to a small secluded country village, where a group of students 35 years ago on a fieldwork exercise disappeared without a trace, and through a class photo he sees the dead boy was one of them. He looked exactly the same now, as he did 35 years ago.

A spooky rural atmosphere is created, slowly encroaching camerawork heightens the anxiety and the narrative builds up the sorrow and mystery, to only throw it away once the freelance writer learns of the town's secret. There it becomes a bog-standard survival/siege outing of lightweight frights leading onto somewhat of a folktale curse, yet the fascinating legend of the Amanojyaku devil and the angle of what happened to the children 35 years ago is never really investigated. That's why I liked the engaging first half, the oddly ambiguous opening and morgue scene especially, more so than the daft second half of the film. How the story played out felt like I was watching an episode from The X-Files / or Kolchak: The Night Stalker. But it just doesn't make much sense, when we get a metaphorical explanation (involving cuckoo birds) why these supposedly dead children keep on returning to the village every season after the rains. All the story arches seem to set-up a back-story, but never go anywhere with it and if so only adds to lingering shadiness -- like that of the freelance writer (a glum Soko Wada). The script wants draw parallels between him and those cute, clingy children of the damned, but the abandonment characteristics and connections do not work. Some obvious CGI shows up, but the make-up is effective.

Japanese Horror of the children of a dead village

[t-dooley-69-386916 · 6/10 · 16 July 2015]

A reporter is told to investigate the case of a young boy who has been found dead in a rural part of Japan. The thing is he has no internal organs and as such may be the victim of organ trafficking. So he traces the boy back to a village.

Once there it transpires that most of the children disappeared mysteriously some 35 years ago and the school the young boy was supposed to be attending is now a deserted museum living as a memory to those that once attended classes there.

To say any more could be a plot spoiler, but once you get what is going on - then this is a run of the mill horror with a few scares along the way and some pretty good acting. But by and large there is nothing much new here. If you like a supernatural horror then there may be something here for you, and I was far from disappointed but I was not raving about how original it was. Also this is one of those that is great just once - so best to go for the rental option - and sit back and enjoy (or not if you find it too scary).

Scary Children Spoiled A Scary Movie

[vghb95a · 7/10 · 9 April 2008]

I will tell ya, nothing spoils a good Japanese horror film than a bunch of scary children running around. Take them out and what you got is a atmospheric spooky movie that bring back to the ice cream days of Ringu, Ju-on, and One missed call. The movie is about a group of people who disappeared all at once at a mountain side village in rural Japan 30 years ago. They were never found. Now, during the raining season, those people who went missing are coming back to the dying village and aged not a day older. The thing is the people who came back are just a facsimile of what they suppose to be. Something is very wrong with them. The remaining villagers lock their doors at sundown, fearing the people who walks in the night, and in all this mix is a burned out tabloid reporter from Tokyo trying to figure out who are these mushroom people.

Doesen't sound too bad I might say, but why the missing people have to be children? Thus, setting up the movie up as another average J-horror flick. This movie has the style, direction, and story of a good creepy movie, but somebody has to say, "bring in the scary children! And make those scary faces!", and this film somehow becomes unintentional funny at times. Please! No more scary children.