Grim and gritty take on the smugglers’ yarn
Film The Vanishing 15 cert, 109 min
Dir Kristoffer Nyholm
Starring Gerard Butler, Peter Mullan, Connor Swindells, Søren Malling, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson
The Vanishing has nothing do with The Vanishing (1988 and 1993), George Sluizer’s unnerving Dutch thriller about a kidnapping. This one is inspired by a true story – the unexplained disappearance of three lighthouse keepers in the Outer Hebrides more than a hundred years ago, a riddle that the filmmakers have speculatively solved.
The so-called Flannan Isles Lighthouse Mystery, also called The Mystery of Eilean Mòr, has been a favourite for armchair sleuths ever since it took place. The three men, James Ducat, Thomas Marshall and Donald Mcarthur, were found missing at their remote post on Boxing Day 1900 – leaving the light extinguished and a single upturned chair.
Paranormal theories have naturally abounded. The solitary island setting lends itself well to a forbidding, MR Jamesian aura – a strategy Danish director Kristoffer Nyholm uses to build atmosphere in this gruff period piece, even if ghosts play no part in the explanation eventually given by the script, by actor-scribes Celyn Jones and Joe Bone. Instead, the pivotal discovery is made after a storm hits. Shipwrecked on the island’s rocks is a small rowing boat with a locked chest, and one occupant, seemingly dead, beside it.
The youngest of the three keepers, Connor Swindells’s Donald, is sent to
investigate, and from here on the trio have an escalating fight on their hands. With its wind-lashed purloinings of smugglers’ gold and cut-throat survival games, the film is redolent of classic adventure fiction. But the tone is grimmer, and the second half, with its mounting body count and guiltstricken deliberations, comes closer to a kind of piratical Shallow Grave.
Peter Mullan can always be relied upon to play brooding weather-beaten men with conviction, and delivers the goods as Thomas. Swindells (Sex Education) has some effectively traumatised moments. It feels as though Gerard Butler has the blandest role as James, but the harshest twists are reserved for him – with an unexpected acting showcase that rips his usual stoic machismo to shreds.
The best scenes involve Danish actor Søren Malling (Borgen), as a suspicious crewmate of the washed-up sailor. But the script fails to make him the devious adversary he should have been. Ideas run thin and while The Vanishing makes an unmistakable effort, it also feels like one, and fades (almost fittingly) from the imagination within hours of seeing it.