All the way back when we launched in January 2021, we celebrated the remarkable international career of a little British thriller called The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009). By then, Alice had already disappeared again in the Netherlands, India, and Germany, acquiring new names, new captors, and some decidedly different experiences along the way.

We didn’t even know about all of those films back then, but we closed ⁠that feature with a prediction: surely another enterprising country would get into the act by 2024.

Well, guess what happened in 2024. And then things really got out of hand.

With a total of seven films in the family today, we’ve decided it’s time to revisit the whole remarkable saga. We’re starting once again at the beginning, with many newly prepared (or newly subtitled) clips from the original film and its first three international offspring. In Part 2, we’ll bring the story up to date with the latest disappearances from India, Nigeria, and South Korea.

And where better to begin than with Alice herself?

Written and directed by J Blakeson, The Disappearance of Alice Creed stars Gemma Arterton as a young woman kidnapped by two men who have meticulously prepared for her captivity. What follows is a claustrophobic thriller full of shifting loyalties, unexpected twists, and enough restraints and gags to make it an instant damsel-in-distress classic.

Arterton apparently took her role quite seriously, insisting on remaining handcuffed to the bed even between takes. Meanwhile, the gag served a second purpose: she joked that the crew used it to keep the notoriously chatty actress quiet!

But Alice’s troubles were only beginning. Soon, she was going international.

First came the Netherlands, with Reckless (Bloedlink, 2014), starring Sarah Chronis. This is a relatively faithful remake, preserving the original’s intimate, increasingly tense atmosphere while bringing its own style and performances to the proceedings.

India followed in 2018 with Echcharikkai, starring Varalaxmi Sarathkumar and offering a considerably looser interpretation of the story. Rather than confining itself to the original’s three principal characters, it introduces a parallel investigation involving a retired police officer and expands the action well beyond the kidnappers’ hideout. The kidnapping scenes themselves are also less elaborate, dispensing with some of the original’s more memorable details. It’s a different approach to the same basic premise, and a fascinating addition to the family.

Then came Germany’s Kidnapping Stella (2019), starring Jella Haase and released by Netflix. This one returns to the original’s tightly focused structure, reproducing many of its sequences with remarkable fidelity. Different actors, different language, same extraordinarily bad day for the unfortunate young woman at the center of it all.

Four films, eight clips, one very busy kidnapping.

As you can probably imagine, these films presented some unusual editorial challenges. There’s so much material in the original and its remakes that even our carefully selected clips can’t include everything. Our longtime contributor MysteryGuest, who assembled many of the clips for this feature, and I sometimes found ourselves making different choices about which moments deserved the spotlight, a reminder that there’s more than one way to approach even the same scene.

To celebrate the occasion, MysteryGuest has also put together a terrific trailer showcasing the extraordinary variety of material across all four films. Many thanks to him for the tremendous amount of work that went into bringing this project together!

And we’re only halfway through: Alice’s international adventures are nowhere near over. In Part 2, we’ll meet Aliya Basu Gayab Hai (2024), Where Is Chioma Kalu (2026), and Sister (2026).

Apparently, some stories simply refuse to stay tied down.