Keep an eye on your kids at all times, 3.5 readers.
BQB here with the new Netflix film, “The Vanished.”
It all starts out happily enough. Mom and Dad (Anne Heche and Thomas Jane, both a little long in the tooth to have a young kid but I assume they were big gets for Netflix so just go with it) pull into an RV park with their young daughter, ready for a fun vacation of camping and fishing.
Alas, Dad takes his eyes off his kid for one minute to oggle the wife half of the young couple in the RV parked next door and daughter goes missing.
Twists and turns ensue, and as Mom and Dad go nuts, they make the situation so much worse.
Jason Patric stars as the noble yet troubled sheriff, looking chubbier and unrecognizable from his Speed 2 days. Not knocking the guy. Happens to all of us.
Definitely a lot of random plot points stuffed in a blender, but the film rests on fakeouts – i.e. it introduces to a host of weirdoes, makes us think each weirdo did it, lets the weirdo off the hook, then moves on to the next weirdo. Even weirder, people who are seemingly norms will be discovered as weirdos and it just goes to show that you should suspect everyone of being weirdoes, whether they show outward signs of weirdo-ness or not.
BTW I always confuse Thomas Jane with Christopher Lambert of Highlander fame and always expect him to start speaking in that Lambertian French accent. He never does because he is not Chris Lambert, but I think there should be a movie about how they were twin brothers separated at birth.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Bookshelf Battle 
Don’t be a weirdo. Check.
I tried not to bust out laughing at the Thomas Jane/Christopher Lambert comparison. Yeah, their eyes are so damn similar. Now I’ve got an image of Thomas Jane dressed up as Rayden from MK. Hmm…
Now I wanna plug in my SNES and play again, dammit.
What was that accent? It was French yet he kind of sounded like a cross between Tommy Wiseau from The Room and Dracula.
I think he was trying to pull a Christian Bale’s Batman before Christian Bale did it.
At least you could understand him when he spoke. But Tommy Wiseau? He needs a bouncy ball with subtitles sometimes.