The Disappeared: DVD review The Disappeared is a horror film, starring Tom Felton, that’s largely about the scares within, with a fair few physical frights, in the form of ‘jumpy’ moments, thrown in for good measure.
Matthew (Harry Treadaway), a regular teenager on a run-down council estate in London, is celebrating his birthday when his younger brother Tom (Lewis Palmer), bored and restless, decides to go to the local park, alone. Only he never returns and Matthew forgets to retrieve him.
The movie begins with Matthew being checked out of hospital; unable to cope with the disappearance of his sibling and struggling to reconcile the truth of what happened. Gradually we come to see that perhaps, as his father (Greg Wise) asserts, he may have been discharged too soon. Matthew is haunted by the events of that night, seeing visions of Tom and other dead locals (including a psychic and a would-be girlfriend), all of whom are trying to convey a message to him.
I approached this film with apprehension, mostly because horror is not my genre of choice, but was surprised by how much it moved me, thanks to focus on the humanity of the characters, rather than gunning for scares. Towards the end it does get gory, but being the climax of a film that’s paced with a plethora of frights, that is only to be expected. The direction of the film is slick, whilst the cinematography perfectly captures the gritty realism of the location, paralleling the extraordinary with that of the mundane.
The DVD boasts an impressive behind-the-scenes documentary, featuring interviews with the cast, the director, the producer and other members of the crew from costuming, to the sound department and beyond. Characterisation, use of locations, cinematography and casting are all discussed in detail, giving the audience a truly rounded insight into the production process of the film and of the industry as a whole. However, while the content of the documentary is fascinating, the manner in which it was shot is very amateur, with the sound quality appalling at times. Accompanying the documentary is an interview with the director, Johnny Kevorkian, conducted at Channel 4’s Frightfest, which is equally instructive and interesting to watch.