The Vanished

A wealthy businesswoman dies. On the night of the funeral her body disappears from the morgue. The attendant ran off in fright and there is no record. Detective Woo investigates and the first suspect is the woman's husband; he teaches at a university and has an assistant much younger than his wife. In the interrogation room the man says his wife is alive. Through the night telephones ring in the morgue, doors open, and the detective and the husband watch each other inside the same building. Something has to come out before morning. Lee Chang-hee directs. Kim Sang-kyung, Kim Kang-woo and Kim Hee-ae are in the cast. It is a South Korean production. The film is a remake of a 2012 Spanish film by Oriol Paulo. The Korean version cuts back the side characters and the locations; the narrative is pressed into the two way tension between the detective and the husband. It opened on 7 March 2018 and took around ten million dollars at the box office. The narrative happens almost entirely in one night and in a few rooms. The matter it treats is guilt; what frightens is not a ghost but what the man knows himself. Kim Hee-ae plays the dead woman in flashback and the character stays strong throughout. The film keeps its turn for the end and until then lets the viewer look the wrong way. Its limit is originality; the plot comes from the Spanish film and there is no surprise left for anyone who has seen the original. Who it is for: viewers who like Korean thrillers and mysteries set over a single night. Who it is not for: it is dark, played out in closed rooms, and the ending cold.