In short: The Vanished (2017)

Original title: 사라진 밤

aka Lost Night

aka The Body

Warning: there will be some structural spoilers!

On a dark and rainy night, the body of high level female corporate executive Yoon Seol-hee (Kim Hee-ae) disappears from the morgue before her autopsy can take place. There are circumstances that may have a hint of the supernatural - if the supernatural hits guards on the head from behind, that is.

Ironically, it’s this disappearance that gets Yoon’s trophy husband, pharmacology professor Park Jin-han (Kim Kang-woo) into trouble, at least with policeman Woo Joong-sik (Kim Sang-kyung). It is deserved trouble, too, for Jin-han has indeed murdered his wife so he can be together with his pregnant girlfriend Hye-jin (Han Ji-an). He has, however, shown no interest at all in blocking an autopsy, for he is sure that the experimental drug he used to kill her is absolutely untraceable. Still, Joong-sik, like a drunk (yes, he does have a tragic traumatic event in his past, why do you ask), angry dog with a bone, isn’t letting go of Jin-han now, even once he is threatened by political pressure and the common sense of his underlings.

At the same time, Jin-han is becoming more and more convinced his wife isn’t actually dead and everything that’s happening now is part of a sadistic revenge plan. Which, given what we see of the woman in flashbacks, wouldn’t exactly come as a surprise.

Lee Chang-hee’s The Vanished is, as is to be expected, a very slickly made film, technically flawless, with always at least competent acting and a well-paced script, too. In fact, Lee’s technical chops as a director and writer manage to sell one of those overconstructed thriller plots that should be not just implausible but utterly ridiculous when put on screen, not exactly turning the ridiculous into the sublime but into the very, very entertaining.

There’s some great use of visual and acoustic tropes of the horror genre used as red herrings, adding a degree of playfulness that never becomes too large to distract from the well-tuned machine that is the movie.

Of course, like a lot of thrillers of the type, The Vanished isn’t a particularly emotionally involving film, having to hide or obfuscate all character motivations, pasts and character traits so its plot won’t break down, sacrificing everything to the surface thrill. Which isn’t as much of a problem here as it could be because Lee never pretends that his film is anything but what it is, so there’s no disappointment in the twisty thriller indeed being a twisty thriller instead of a twisty psychological thriller.