Vanished – review

Director: Matt Spade

Release Date: 2018

Contains spoilers


A budget movie from 2018, I was impressed by the crisp clarity of the photography in this. Unfortunately, despite ambition, the film itself did not work as well as it might.

To me, as I watched it, I was struck that it felt like a low budgeted attempt to capture something akin to Salem’s Lot but it failed to capture either the atmosphere or the scope of the famous mini-series and so felt limited where it could have played up the wider vista of the small town with much more aplomb.

Body in the open

Having been told that the film was inspired by a dream, we discover we are in a small Pennsylvania town. A radio show suggests that there are four missing kids and the credits show us various newspapers through the years that suggest that spates of missing kids occur every decade or so. The search is on for Laurie Greyson – we see her prone body and given the interspersing with the cemetery we assume she is there – plus an establishing shot of a chained crypt. As she has been missing for four days, and her body appears to be out among the elements, we wonder that she wasn’t found.

vamping out

A group of three guys meet in the cemetery, as does Sarah, a babysitter with her ward Tommy. The guys chew the fat as Tommy plays, when a very ill looking Laurie comes to them and warns them to get out as the night is falling. They start trying to talk to her when she suddenly attacks. All three guys are killed and Sarah runs away with Tommy. Given what we have seen, the fact that she tucks him into bed and seems utterly unconcerned seems a tad off. Laurie appears at a window. We hear breaking glass and – as Sarah is listed later as missing – I assume she was pulled out off-screen as we discover the invitation rule applies in this.

clued-up kids

More and more kids go missing and some adults start to vanish too. The town is concerned, businesses are closing and the police are clueless. Later we discover that the mayor was in on it with the main vampire, Mr Gallows, and his human (but long lived) henchman. One strange aspect is that Tommy and a girl called Charity seem more clued-up than the adults – she gives him a bottle of holy water. The film eventually comes to an abrupt chapter end, following a mob going to the cemetery and many glowing eyed vampires.

adult Tom

The film then jumps forward 20 years (the first half was set in 1993, though this isn’t communicated). Tommy, orphaned by the vampires, was moved out of town and now lives in the city and goes by Tom. He is respected by his boss as, though he can zone out in meetings (thinking, we realise, about the events of his past), he is the company’s highest earner. Charity finds him – she had been told what was going on by her grandmother, back in the day, and told there was someone she'd know she could trust (Tommy). We see the kids in flashback, Tommy inviting a vampire in, Charity distracting her with holy water and Tommy staking her (remember they were eight).

Mr Gallows

It has started again and Charity gets Tom to go home so that they can rescue the town and deal with Mr Gallows… Gallows looks a tad like the Master from Salem’s Lot (1979) but with quite poor makeup. The story holds together so long as you don’t start scrutinising it and, if you do, you see incongruities and holes. The buildings associated with the evil (the crypt and the big house the human helper lives in) will vanish if Gallows is destroyed.

let me in

As I mentioned, the photography was much better than many a budget film. Some of the acting was quite good – especially one of the lads in the cemetery at the beginning – but other performances were distinctly average. I think this deserves to be liked a lot but never reached its level of ambition and that makes liking it that much so very difficult. As it is the film needs much more atmosphere, indeed it needs a build up of dread caused by the home-town rotting from the inside that both versions of Salem’s Lot do really well. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

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