One of a parent’s most intense nightmares comes true in Disappeared into the night (now on Netflix), an Italian mystery thriller about a father whose children simply disappear into the night. Directed by Renato De Maria (The Merciless, Robbing Mussolini), the remake film of Patxi Amezcua’s 2013 Spanish thriller Seventh (also know as The seventh floor)with Riccardo Scamarcio (a couple of John Wicks) and Annabelle Wallis (Evil one, Peaky Blinders) leading the cast. This new film follows the vein of Hitchcock’s Wrong Man, guiding its protagonist through a series of complications and frustrations that might pay off in the end if everyone involved is diligent and committed, which is almost certainly the case.
DISAPPEARED IN THE NIGHTSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: One moment, they’re swimming in the beautiful waters off the coast of Italy with the kids, and the next, they’re parked at a porce hearing with lawyers. That’s life. Pietro (Scamarcio) and Elena (Wallis) have reached the stage of irreconcilable differences, and now it’s all about custody and who gets what. Her lawyer points out Pietro’s gambling debts and his lawyer points out Elena’s drug problems, but Pietro steps in, is sympathetic, and says the painkiller problem arose after a prescribed dose turned into an addiction. Are you paying attention to this? I hope so. It might be relevant later.
Pietro seems like a nice guy. He’s made some mistakes and seems to be close to getting out of trouble. There’s the matter of him owing some guy money – 250,000 euros, which is nothing – but he’s good with kids and he’s renovating an old farmhouse into a B&B. We see him interact with Nico (Massimiliano Gallo), who’s oozing a bit of slime, and we get the sense that Pietro is trying to distance himself from shady past deeds, like the ones this Nico guy is almost certainly doing. I mean, his boat is in trouble. Much larger than Pietro’s, something his kids are quick to point out as he winces in pain. Anyway, it’s Pietro’s night with the little rascals. He puts Giovanni (Lorenzo Ferrante) and Bianca (Gaia Coletti) to bed, cracks open a beer and lights up a joint while watching the game. A little while later, he checks on the kids and they’re not there. He searches all over the property, up and down, here and there. There’s nowhere in sight. What’s going on? It seems they’ve been TITLE OF THE FILM.
He calls Elena, desperate. She heads to the farm. Marital tensions are put aside, at least for the most part. Pietro gets a call: he has to pay 150,000 euros as a ransom, or else… He doesn’t have that kind of money. Who does? Elena knows: Nico. Pietro is like… Oh man, that guy doesn’t and Elena is like What other alternative do we have? And then he goes to Nico, who is like Okay, you can keep the money, but you have to do something for me first.And that little detail is that Pietro is going to take his boat on a quick three-hour trip to Greece to pick up a “package” for Nico. I’m sure it’s just some stacks of old newspapers or Precious Moments collectible figurines, something like that, and it’s not drugs, not at all. So poor, desperate Pietro gets a kiss goodbye and good luck from Elena (wow!), then hops back on his boat so he can look all sweaty and suspicious for the rest of the movie, but only because everything is going so incredibly well, without a hitch, no sir. But that’s a lie! It’s going pretty badly! It wouldn’t be much of a movie if it had a perfectly lovely evening, would it?
What movies will it remind you of? Pietro does not exist in a film with the scale, ambition and relative budget of north by northwestBut surely that story of an exasperated man who runs away comes to mind.
Performance worth watching: Scamarcio’s big, expressive eyes are put to good use as he plays the eerily hard-pressed protagonist in a film that puts more emphasis on plot than character.
Memorable dialogue: Poor Pietro decides he has to carry out Nico’s plan: “I have no choice. I’m the one who screwed everything up. I’m going to fix it now.”
Sex and skin: None.
Our opinion: No detail is too small in the first act of Disappeared into the night – you never know which of them foreshadows important future events or might be a very important plot device in the third act. That’s the kind of movie this is: silly and implausible, but precisely directed by De Maria, whose goal is to keep us in suspense and make us feel burdened and excited and so caught up in Pietro’s exasperated downward spiral into possible madness that we won’t see it coming when he starts to pull the floor out from under us.
Yes, this movie is artificial and overly tidy in its execution of seemingly pointless details you probably didn’t pay attention to, in an attempt to be very clever. But if you throw your suspension of disbelief overboard to the sharks for 90 minutes, you’ll be amused by its small-scale gaslighting conspiracy plot and Scamarcio’s rushed performance, and you’ll appreciate how De Maria builds tension so tantalizingly close to the breaking point—that is, when we stop believing and start laughing. I’m not sure the denouement is entirely satisfying. I kept saying Another juicy shoe better show up here soon – but after doing the math, I was more captivated by this story than not.
Our calling: Nobody is reinventing the wheel with Disappeared into the nightBut if you’re looking for a quick distraction with a popcorn thriller, there’s nothing better than streaming it.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
