"If you want to freak yourself out Hollywood-style, The Silence of the Lambs is probably the crème de la crème of serial killer movies, no? If you prefer a Dutch kidnapping story, go for The Vanishing. Both are incredible."

"If you want to freak yourself out Hollywood-style, The Silence of the Lambs is probably the crème de la crème of serial killer movies, no? If you prefer a Dutch kidnapping story, go for The Vanishing. Both are incredible."

"There is so much great stuff in Ann Patchett’s latest—a grandiose mansion, a dysfunctional family, an evil stepmother—that I don’t even know where to begin. Spanning five decades, The Dutch House is masterful storytelling by one of our best novelists. Give it a go."

"This Dutch director George Sluizer is actually a Frenchman, or born in France anyway. This creepy 1988 thriller about a woman abducted and the torment her kidnapper puts her boyfriend through was remade by the director as an American film in 1993. But check out this original and see if you don’t have nightmares."

"This was the first movie where I was aware of what a director did. There’s a scene near the climax where the camera zooms in and rotates 45 degrees into an extreme Dutch angle close-up on Giancarlo Esposito’s face. “Someone made that decision!” I thought. I also love the fact that it was our last president and irst lady’s first date."

"Sluizer is a Dutch director I met in my early twenties and instantly liked and admired. Finally, in 1988, he made really good with this suffocating horror movie—so bland on the surface, so naturalistic in its acting, and yet as ghastly as any catacomb in its study of crime and perversion. When Sluizer remade the movie for Fox, the whole story lost its relentless, claustrophobic grip."