Starring: Storm Reid, Nia Long, Tim Griffin, Ken Leung, Amy Landecker, Megan Suri, Joaquim de Almeida, Daniel Henney
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Runtime: 111 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2023
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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When her mother disappears while on vacation in Colombia, June, in Los Angeles, creatively uses all the latest technology at her fingertips to try and find her before it’s too late.
For audiences who enjoy a thriller with twists, there is much to satisfy as well as mystify in Missing.
In the past, it has been helpful for reviewers for assessing moral perspectives of the film and its treatment of contentious issues to make a distinction between “what” is presented and “how” it is presented.
However, it is quite important for this film. The “what” is the thriller plot. The “how” is the style of the storytelling, the focus on IT, the fact that the audience for almost two hours looking at the big cinema screen, is actually looking at computer screens, phone screens, surveillance footage, television news… This means that the action is limited as to what can be brought into the plot to use the technology. And, certainly, this it does. Which means that computer-savvy younger audiences might take a lot of this for granted, relishing it, identifying with it, discovering possibilities for their own use and explorations. But it also means that the older demographic, especially those who are less computer literate, may be quite bewildered.
In 2018, two writers, Aneesh Changanty and Sev Ohanian wrote a thriller about an investigation called Searching, filming computer and phone screens through the whole film. It was praised for its style. Changanty directed. This time the two have come up with the plot, obviously similar to Searching (and also for their 2020 thriller, Run, a drama about conflict between mother and daughter). However, this time the film has been directed and written by the team of Johnson and Merrick. In their stories, Searching and Missing are more mainstream entertainments than a number of recent horror films which also delve into this IT way of telling tales.
For the less technologically initiated, it is amazing to watch the central character, June (Reid), aged 18, at her computer, seen going to the airport to meet her mother returning from a trip to Colombia, and her not returning, and the audience becoming more involved with her searching, finding the hotel, trying to check out the surveillance footage, hiring an investigator in Colombia, making contact with the embassy, with the FBI, with the police. Her fingers move quickly over her keyboard but also touching her screen, the range of icons, bringing up views of the foreign country, linking into websites, typing English onto her screen and clicking for instant Spanish translation, going into all kinds of websites, bank accounts, using a range of passwords, and finding video data on dating sites.
Which means that there is no lack of action in the film, but we watch it on the variety of screens. Even action within the screen is devised so that there are reflections, angles, so that it is not simply June sitting at her computer.
In fact, initially there are a couple of surprises. Then there is a twist. Then there is another twist. And yet another, keeping the audience puzzled and interested.
Most of us would not like all our films, all our thrillers, to be filmed in this way – we need breathing space and the camera having room to move. However, in its way, Missing is quite successful.
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