No pun intended - we all know that stuff from the past can come and haunt us. We may also remeber stuff differently than they actually happened ... our mind can play tricks like that. On the other hand, even if we remember something ... others may not actually believe us.

All that said, there is a high chance you will know what at least one of the big twists is - or was. It really wants you to have some patience with it - and if you are not able to wait and dig the pace this has (it is quite slow) ... well you will end up not ... ending the movie I reckon (as I can tell) ... which would be a shame, since there is something here ... something to find and something that is quite .... good and bad I suppose.

Well acted and some red herrings (not swimming - more puns I guess) ... you will be able to see through it. Moral of the story? Don't be a bully ...

What a load of garbage. Just annoying don't bother!!

Menno Meyjes made some name for himself in the USA by writing stories and screenplays for Steven Spielberg (Color Purple, Indiana Jones), but in the 2010s he tried to direct his own screenplays in his native Netherlands. I say 'tried', because I was unimpressed by the messy way in which he adapted Herman Koch's praised novel "The Diner". Now when you bake pancakes, the first one usually fails, so I hoped he would fare better on his follow-up(s), but The Reunion turned out even worse.

I always struggle to define what makes great directing, because directing is a key component in film that is often hard to separate from a good script, acting and cinematography. It is actually much easier to point out bad directing, because that is when the cinematic parts do not come together satisfactorily. In other words, the meal may contain all the ingredients, but the cook is unable to make it tasty.

Following this analogy, The Reunion is an undercooked and bland experience that seriously lacks seasoning. Despite a potentially intriguing story and a cast of Dutch veterans, it commits one of the worst sins of cinema: it couldn't hold my attention. I've seen plenty of bad films that weren't a complete waste of time because there was at least something to focus on, for good or for bad, but The Reunion hardly moved me at all in any direction. There is a flashback structure that gives great potential for some dramatic tension, but the director simply doesn't know how to use it to any effect. The narrative is so inert, aimless and uninteresting at times that some scenes could simply have been edited in a different order, and it wouldn't have mattered one bit. A lot of side plot lines are introduced but most of them (such as the parents of the missing girl, the death of the brother) hardly serve any purpose overall. There are way too many cartboard characters, such as the nasty lady boss character and the autistic colleague who have no other role in the story that just being a nasty boss and an autistic colleague. The only (somewhat) positive thing worth mentioning is the storyline in the past with its actors, because it feels that it is actually going somewhere, even though that promise isn't exactly fulfilled at the end.

One of the other 'sins' is that there is a love scene that is so sterile and asexual that it could serve as a commercial to promote abstinence. The Dutch film industry was once famed (or imfamous) for its copious depiction of nudity and sex in its products, but the living proof that we got overly prude since the 80s is in full display here. A love scene should be engaging and evoke feelings, be it romantic, arousing or even tension if there is a dark undertone, but Meyjes seems almost afraid to show any nudity (unless you count two briefly bared bottoms). The single love scene is shot so clumsily that it could almost play for laughs if this was a PG rated comedy. It may have been better if they had aimed for that, because for a thriller, this film packs surprisingly few thrills.

The third worst sin is the waste of such a talented cast. Tekla Reuten en Daan Schuurmans were also in The Dinner, but the director again fails to make the audience connect with their characters. Reuten's character is bland and mousy rather than mysterious, a lot of the supporting cast is wasted in roles that don't amount to much, and Schuurmans' bad guy role is downright annoying where he should have been threatening.

If The Dinner showed that Meyjes still had a lot to learn as a director, then this movie convinces me that he failed to do that and had better stick to screenwriting. I have also seen his next movie, The Hero, which was actually a slight improvement over both Dinner and Reunion, but still ended as a disappointment. Oh well, hopefully that means that I will actually start enjoying his movies after another three movies or so.