Sony Pictures
I think that every family that consists of a few armchair detectives has, at one point or another over the past half-decade, gathered around the dining room table with one of those ‘true crime/solve the mystery/pretend to be a homicide detective/stock footage victim’ board games. They’re fun, sure, and a guarantee that you can only play it once because now you know the killer/kidnapper/stock footage suspect.
I try not to be a party pooper when these appear in front of me, but I have one major issue with these games (the mobile version(s) of these games commit the same crime) and that is: you don’t really know what the game wants from you. You spend so much time looking through the victim’s phone when you should have been paying attention to the typo on the restaurant’s menu. I understand that this means I could never be a detective, but I never wanted to be one. I just wanted to eat the deviled eggs that my aunt made.
The reason why I enjoyed Missing (the spiritual sequel to 2018’s Searching, another movie I quite enjoyed) is that you can trust it to give you the information that you need when you need it. Sit down for the ride and it’ll take you there.
June, played by rising star Storm Reid (from 12 Years a Slave to Euphoria), stays home alone while her potential step-dad, Kevin, takes her mom to Colombia to take their relationship to the next level. June uses her ’emergency money’ to throw a week’s worth of parties, going on an accidental bender that lasts so long that she oversleeps when she’s supposed to be picking them up from the airport. Her lateness doesn’t matter, however, as Mom and Kevin never land at LAX. Working with a slow-moving police department and red-tapped American Embassy, Grace must figure out when they went missing and how to get them back — all from back home in the States.
That is much easier said than done.
The first and most obvious hurdle is that the film, just like Searching, is a ‘screenlife’ movie – where the entire film takes place on our main character’s desktop. The mystery is revealed through text messages, FaceTime calls, emails, Venmo transactions, and a slew of other sites and apps. Sometimes you have to work a little harder to trust the movie when it comes to some of the technology, (‘Why doesn’t this teenage girl ever use her PHONE?’ is a question you’ll get tired of asking,) but it’s considerably easier to choke down than some found-footage movie where they guy has to both run from and properly frame-and-film the monster.
The second hurdle is the seemingly endless amount of twists and turns. Yes, mysteries should reveal information in chunks to make it a journey that must be traveled and yes, that’s the exact thing I’m arguing that this film does well. However, after two hours, it can be a little exhausting. (Again, I could never be a detective!) Perhaps it’s the puffy runtime (a slick 90 would have been perfect), perhaps it’s the jilted climax (consisting of ‘this is literally the only thing we could do’ decisions), but something about those twists and turns doesn’t always feel justified.
The film’s co-writers and directors, Nick Johnson and Will Merrick, are familiar with how this story should work as they were the editors on Searching. It’s a movie that both feels like an editor’s dream and the perfect way for editors to make the leap to writing and directing, as this is their feature debut. If you can put your faith in them to know what they’re doing, there is very little to complain about. Sure, there are several frustrating dead-ends. Sure, there are some characters that very clearly exist for the sole purpose of being suspicious, but that’s how these mysteries work. If the filmmakers can play fair, giving you just enough and just the right time, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, there isn’t much more you can ask for in addition to their creativity and serious conviction.
Missing works for many reasons. It will satiate those armchair detectives and perhaps spare you from spending the $20 at Target on one of those board games. It’ll please those who liked Searching and/or those who wanted a mystery version of the horror films Unfriended, Spree, or the pandemic product Host. It will work best, however, for audience members that can enjoy the film for what it is and what it’s doing: suspense, melodrama, and a solid whodunit.
Missing has a run time of 1 hour 51 minutes, and is rated PG-13 for some strong violence, language, teen drinking, and thematic material.
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