10 More Horror Movies Where Evil Wins
6. The Vanishing
George Sluizer's legendary Dutch horror-thriller The Vanishing follows Rex (Gene Bervoets), a man whose girlfriend Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) disappears from a rest stop, vanishing without a trace.
Three years later, Rex remains hauntedly obsessed with his partner's disappearance, and after he makes a desperate appeal for information on TV, the man responsible, Raymond (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), makes contact.
In the film's quietly gut-wrenching climax, Raymond offers to reveal to Rex what happened to Saskia if he drinks some drugged coffee and willingly experiences what she did. An irate Rex ultimately agrees, drinking the coffee and later waking up buried alive with no possibility of escape, all while Raymond returns to his family with absolutely nothing connecting him to either murder.
It's all the more unnerving given that Raymond is the furthest thing imaginable from a garden variety maniac - he's a mild-mannered sociopath whose "normality" is precisely what allows him to blend into society and avoid suspicion entirely.
Sadly, the 1993 English-language remake, also directed by Sluzier, opted for a more typically Hollywood ending, with Rex's equivalent being saved and ultimately killing his captor.