Most critics rate George Sluizer’s Dutch thriller highly, and the praise clusters in the same places. Reviewers call it chilling, hypnotic and disturbing, and several single out the way Sluizer stages the ordinary details of a holiday stop so that a kidnapping seems both plausible and inevitable. Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu’s performance as the abductor is repeatedly noted. The ending is the other point of agreement: critics describe it as devastating and unforgettable without, mostly, giving it away. Those who compare it with the American remake prefer the original for keeping its nerve.
The spread is narrow. Six of the eight reviews are firmly positive, and no critic dislikes the film. Of the two mixed verdicts, Slant Magazine gives it three stars while still calling it unsettling and praising the staging, so the reservation is one of degree rather than kind. The consensus is that the film’s bleakness is its strength, and almost nobody argues otherwise.