Vanished into the Night Fans Should Watch the Movie It’s Based On

Quickly breaking into Netflix’s most-watched movie list, Director Renato De Maria’s latest film is not about notorious mafia members or heroic resistance fighters. Instead, the hour-and-a-half exclusive called Vanished into the Night focuses on a couple in Bari, Italy, who are in the midst of separating. Riccardo Scamarcio’s Pietro and Annabelle Wallis’ Elena’s fragile lives become even more shattered when their two small children suddenly go missing without a trace in the middle of the night. What follows is a brave father’s journey to bring them home — even if that means stepping into some shady situations and putting himself in danger.

The well-experienced duo of Scamarcio and Wallis help create a dynamic that moves the mystery along at an eager pace. While the former had roles in A Haunting in Venice and John Wick 2, Wallis appeared in Peaky Blinders and The Tudors. As you can see, they both know how to convey believable characters to the camera. At the end of it all, you just won’t believe who’s really behind the kidnappings. You’ll also be shocked to know that Vanished into the Night is actually a remake of a popular Argentine-Spanish movie, 7th Floor.

7th Floor’s Kidnapping Story Is Even More Interesting

7th Floor Has a Unique Introduction

Becoming such an international box-office success with moviegoers, a mystery film from 2013 titled 7th Floor (known in Spanish as Septimo) originally had the missing children storyline set in Buenos Aires and not Italy. Suffice it to say, the all-important scene of the kids being kidnapped is handled a lot more daringly. Instead of being taken from their father while peacefully sleeping, an apartment building’s interior architecture is used to pull off this sequence. Headlined by prolific actor Ricardo Alberto Darín’s Sebastian (who is the courageous father in this edition), 7th Floor’s inciting incident takes place when he uses the elevator to descend his apartment building while his children attempt to race him by running down the stairs — except Sebastian never reunites with his children. A long and winding staircase now becomes an emotional black hole.

Netflix’s Vanished into the Night also makes the storytelling decision to separate the two parents, locking the viewer’s perspective onto Pietro’s handling of the situation. Besides a sequence that involves bringing a satchel to a specific location (which happens in both movies, just much shorter in 7th Floor), a more psychological affair is played out in the 2013 version. Before the reveal takes place, a long and drawn-out deconstruction of both parents — Sebastian and his wife, Delia — takes hold, and they accuse just about everybody in the building, even people they have known for years.

As these desperate acts do run parallel to any parents in real life whose children were grabbed from them just like that, this first act of 7th Floor delivers a visual and stunning trauma that is just missing from the 2024 feature. With the parents together, the climax is much more startling. Admittedly, Vanished into the Night almost gives this away from the start.

7th Floor Deals With the Paranoia of Missing Children

Another difference between the Italian and Argentine-Spanish versions of this mystery is the setting and how this affects the overall anxiety about the ongoing situation. Vanished into the Night not only takes place in Bari but also takes the viewer out to sea, to another town, to a drug dealer’s home, and back again. While that film tries to show that the kids could be anywhere (even someplace a long distance away), 7th Floor successfully does the opposite.

Even though both films end up at the airport, most of the original is restrained to the apartment building — always asking how far the children could have gotten in such a short time. Sebastian cannot find them, no matter how hard he looks. This type of small setting helps increase the sense of frustration and panic not only for the characters but the viewer as well. The puzzling staircase may be his nightmare, but the elevator is his savior because it is used to talk to various residents and workers and as a filmmaking tool to pace the movie.

Related

The Scariest Movies About Being Kidnapped, Ranked

Some of the scariest movies have nothing to do with demons or supernatural villains; everyday people can be just as horrifying when you’re kidnapped.

Many characters (suspects to the distressed parents) are introduced before the tense handoff in 7th Floor. The father’s emotional grieving turns into a blame game, going after many tenants — even just barging into an apartment at one point. The concierge, parking attendant, and detective all become enemies in Sebastian’s eyes at one point, too, until the truth is figured out.

Along the way — and this has to be pointed out — Spanish music composer Roque Baños understands the calamity at hand and provides the right selections when needed. When mentally cornered in the narrow building, the musical accompaniment is slow and barely noticeable. When Sebastian finally knows what he needs to do, music plays that sounds like a call to action. If you want to see the original work (which introduces many more possibilities as to who the perpetrator is and has a more clear-cut ending), 7th Floor is available to watch on Prime Video and Apple TV. Vanished into the Night is available to stream on Netflix.