Apparently a lot of people think the revelation at the end of this film is worth the trip to get there. I am not one of them. (Don't worry; I won't be giving anything away.)<br /><br />I don't think the comparison which has been made to Hitchcock is apt at all. Hitchcock normally puts you on a slow boil, then raises the temperature until by the end you're scorching and sticking to the bottom of the pot (maybe I took that analogy too far). There is a lot to keep you busy in the typical Hitchcock film, with an exciting finale as a bonus.<br /><br />But in The Vanishing there is so little to hold your interest. By about midway, I was wondering whether the film would end up like The Usual Suspects, where the ending would force the viewer to re-evaluate everything that had gone before. But in that film your attention was held until the twist. In The Vanishing unfortunately, it's an all-or-nothing proposition. The first 100 minutes of the film have no merit of any kind -- they're just setup for the big payoff. And for me the big payoff was in Confederate currency.