The Cave (2012)

Two teenage Dutch boys, Axel and Egon, meet on a camping trip to Belgium. Axel is already a quasi-bully-cum-leader, and redirects shy Egon's attentions from a quiet girl named Marjoke to a pair of hot-to-trot sisters. Years later, Axel gains notoriety as a drug baron while Egon sticks to geology, but their interactions are far from over. Tim Krabbe, a master at creating and maintaining eerie suspense (his novel The Golden Egg became the chill-inducing 1988 French-Dutch film The Vanishing), tells the story of The Cave mainly through various disparate flashbacks but ultimately pulls them all cleanly together. Pared down to the barest of narrative bones, creepy, sinister, and terrifying, this 152-page thriller packs a powerful punch. A-