PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Gerard Butler is the mall Chinese food of action stars, and I don’t pay that compliment lightly. He may not be to everyone’s taste. Some might turn their nose up at the mention. But if you’ve got the taste the sheer animalistic hankering of the stuff, nothing hits the spot better. This man hurtles through borderline forgettable shoot-em-ups with the tipsy edge of a bull in a multi-million dollar China shop.
Much like the questionably exotic allure of that place in the food court that took the place of Panda Express but doesn’t even seem to have changed the menu, Gerard Butler’s appeal lies in his surly sense of unpredictability. Will the lo mein give you the trots? Will Butler break the fourth wall and kill a grip with only his five o’ clock shadow? Or will he hand a glass of water to the President and say, “I don’t know about you, sir, but I’m thirsty as fuck”? One of those actually happened in London Has Fallen, so you never can tell. So, it’s exciting to see him in a movie like The Vanishing, which dials back the action and rests most of its tension squarely on this bearded menace.
As we’ve reported earlier, the title refers to The Flannan Isle Mystery. In 1900, the three appointed keepers of the Flannan Isle lighthouse disappeared without a clue. Everything from ghosts to espionage was blamed, but to this day, nobody knows what really happened.
The Vanishing makes an educated, grim guess. After kissing his family goodbye, James (Gerard Butler: Den of Thieves 2018) joins veteran keeper Thomas (Peter Mullan: Children of Men 2006) and greenhorn Donald (Connor Swindells: Harlots 2017) for another endless shift on Flannan Isle. Knowing none of them will make it back shades every scene, every mind-numbing routine, in queasy inevitability.
But despite its one hour, forty-five runtime, The Vanishing is in no hurry to get where you know it’s going. Director Kristoffer Nyholm (Taboo 2017) and co-writers Joe Bone and Celyn Jones let the isolation settle in before the dead body and its mysterious gold show up. You’re never more than ten shots away from a picturesque reminder that the only constant on Flannan Isle is the all-swallowing horizon… a dirty dishwater sky over churning black waters. How many carrots can be dramatically chopped before that quiet makes a man mad?
The Vanishing is a slow burn thriller – it takes almost a full half-hour for the first signs of conflict to arrive – but it has a disappointing habit of burning just a little too slow. The dirty and desaturated cinematography from Jorgen Johansson (Prague 2006), at its best conjuring the washed-out vibrance of early color photos, makes the wait easier, but you can only marvel at the monolithic shadow of Flannan Isle so many times.
When the sparing violence does arrive, it sure is intense. Most of it is plain ol’ blunt force trauma: clubbings, stonings, blood flowing, scars cluttering haggard faces. Most of it makes good on The Vanishing’s immediate promise of cruel dread. Someone sneaks up on someone else without making a single sound and knocks them unconscious with one swing of a stick. A bluntly foreshadowed act of brutality like this wouldn’t seem out of place in a latter-day Friday the 13th sequel. However, a significant murder is played off-screen in a manner that feels more budgetary than artistic.
Not all of it works. A grave danger in a story so intentionally sparse, The Vanishing passes muster on its performances. Peter Mullan grounds his every scene like a broken, benevolent crag of the island, its ancient cracks fading into the tired lines around his eyes. He sighs with the weight of a minor legend, the sailor with a million stories who can’t bear yet another tale. Connor Swindells, the fresh meat, scrambles with the wide-eyed nerves of a kid who’d prefer not to have any stories, thank you very much.
The filmmakers leave Gerard Butler as the welcome wildcard… the man with the most to lose. He’s the one that does all the heavy lifting, spending the most time in the lantern room where the mercury has a nasty habit of leaking. Early on, he capably shades in the edges of the Family Man Mode that’s required in the beginning and end of his action movies. Once they’re overtaken by the allure of easy money and the realization that money is never easy for the three lonely souls on the island, Butler turns in career-best work. It’s almost a revelation to see him in a film where a single murder makes him lose several nights of sleep. There’s a late scene on a cliff, after Things Have Happened That Can Never Be Unhappened, where he watches the unflinching horizon with eyes like sea glass and, without looking at his fellow keepers, admits, “I can’t feel anything.”
Well, I could certainly feel something.
The Vanishing makes better use of Gerard Butler than most Gerard Butler movies. Close-ups hang on his bloodied face, letting us decide if his expression reads exhaustion, underwhelmed amusement or impending death for someone within arm’s reach. His native accent serves friendly jabs and double-edged threats with the same gravity. The man looks like a lighthouse keeper, or at least like he belongs in chunky cable-knit sweaters.
If you’ve ever turned up your nose at a Gerard Butler project, The Vanishing might be the movie to change your mind. Finding another thriller with its one-of-a-kind setting, style or admirably bitter aftertaste would be tough. Finding its star in better form would be nigh impossible.
