Popcorn Frights 2026 Coverage
The Vanishing Tour review.
I can honestly say that I didn’t see it coming.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
The Vanishing Tour
Directed by Patrick Meaney
Written by Patrick Meaney
Starring Brendan Wayne, Amber Benson, Ryan Lee, Auden Wyle, Mina Tobias, Nicolette Norgaard, Dove Meir, Jeff Torres and Justin Baker
The Vanishing Tour Review
It’s always fun when a movie goes in a completely different direction than you expect it to. The Vanishing Tour never really states that it is heading where I thought it was the whole first half…but it certainly wanted me to think it. When I lay out the story’s setup in the next paragraph, you’re immediately going to think that it’s going that way too. That’s one of the clever things about The Vanishing Tour. It wears its obvious intentions on its sleeve…and then changes its shirt.
A struggling band gets carjacked and stranded in the middle of the desert. After some wandering and worrying they come across a compound in the middle of the nowhere they found themselves. A couple lives there…with no cell service and too far from amenities for any help to make it. The woman seems nice enough…but the man isn’t exactly thrilled at opening his home to the desperate strangers. The band (mostly) doesn’t want to stay either…but there’s no quick and easy way back to civilization. And, they learn, there may be no way out at all.
Now…we’re all thinking the same thing. We’ve seen this setup enough times to know what to expect from acts 2 and 3 of this story. The Vanishing Tour does none of it. In fact, it is so radically different than the first act suggests that I spent a good amount of time marveling at the choice to misdirect so hard. It makes every little reveal that much more interesting. As characters we thought one thing about show us new sides…and we learn what’s actually going on in this remote compound. Saying any more about the latter would ruin the fun of what The Vanishing Tour is doing. I’m not going to do that to you. But it also limits what I can talk about in this review.
That’s the point of the review where you should just mark down to check out The Vanishing Tour for yourself when it becomes easily accessible. I’m not going to tell you that where the story heads is always the best choice or the most exciting one…but it sure kept my interest from the time one of the band member broke into a locked shed until the credits rolled. I seriously couldn’t even have guessed what genre this movie turned out to be. That’s not to say there isn’t blood and death and scary character walking about…there are. It’s still a horror movie too. From the time the band is carjacked until its pitch perfect final scene. It just isn’t the kind of horror movie you could have predicted.
Unpredictability is the strongest card up The Vanishing Tour’s sleeve. I don’t know why I’m making so many sleeve references in this review. Not being able to talk about what the movie really is seems to have locked me into some clothing based loop. The Vanishing Tour’s second best trick is the way your viewpoint of its characters continues to evolve. Sometimes because we learn a truth…sometimes because they do. Sometimes because something completely unexpected happens to them and they aren’t exactly feeling like themselves anymore. Whatever way you slice it…The Vanishing Tour does a great job misdirecting you (and its characters) over and over again.
With characters that end up acting and being seen differently as the story unfolds around them…The Vanishing Tour required a strong cast to pull off what it’s doing. The whole ensemble holds up their end of the deal. Even if you don’t like a character at first…give it a couple of scenes and you may feel differently. Most importantly, you’ll definitely feel something by the end. When all of its cards are on the table (because they took them out of their sleeves…booyah rule of three) The Vanishing Tour makes its final move and becomes something new once again. Something you could never have predicted when the band stumbled upon that compound…and something, in its own way, scarier than anything you thought it was going to become.
Scare Value
What I enjoyed most about The Vanishing Tour is how I was completely unable to get ahead of it. Sure, it eventually reveals what it really is and you can at least stay even with it…but if you asked me to guess where it was going after the first 30 minutes…I’d have gotten 0.0 words right. The Vanishing Tour leverages those little turns and surprises into an interesting story heading towards a great finish. Watching the characters twist with the changing winds is another treat. The total package is a good movie with a great ending…and a strong idea for how to go from where it begins to where it’s going.
