As a Millennial, I’m all too aware of how much time I spend on the internet, social media applications, or with my cell phone in hand.
That being said, it’s pretty scary to think that having such a digital footprint could be easily accessed by anyone around the world if they had the time or skill.
“Missing” capitalizes on that fear in an interesting way -the only problem is that the plot twist took too long to make it on screen.
Outside of that, it’s definitely a modern-day thriller that serves as a cautionary tale for parents and teens alike.
But, to be fair, if the parents and teenagers established clear communication early in their lives, things might have not progressed as they did either.
Missing is a screenlife thriller film written and directed by Will Merrick and Nick Johnson in their feature directorial debuts from a story by Sev Ohanian and Aneesh Chaganty, who also produced the film with Natalie Qasabian, Timur Bekmambetov and Adam Sidman.
The film is a standalone sequel to Searching (2018) and stars Storm Reid, Joaquim de Almeida, Ken Leung, Amy Landecker, Daniel Henney, Tim Griffin, Laura Mosley, and Nia Long.
Missing is 111 minutes long and rated PG-13 for some strong violence, language, teen drinking, and thematic material.
In an archive video, a young June Allen is with her deceased father James (Griffin), who died from a brain tumor shortly after the video was made.
Years later, June (Reid) plans a house party after her mother Grace (Long) leaves for a week-long trip to Colombia with her new boyfriend Kevin (Leung).
Unfortunately, Grace tells June, to her annoyance, that she will be looked on by Grace’s friend Heather (Landecker), a divorce lawyer who expresses some jealousy at Grace’s relationship with Kevin.
A week later, June is tasked to pick her mother and Kevin up at Los Angeles International Airport, but they never show up, causing June to contact the authorities.
Frustrated by a seeming lack of progress by the FBI, June decides to investigate herself using an array of digital tools at her disposal — Google Maps, Facebook messages, internet search histories, etc.
She also hires Javier (Almeida), a Colombian gig worker who does June’s requests for a small fee.
June soon learns that Kevin is not who he says he is.
After hacking into his Gmail account, she discovers a number of aliases and, eventually, a criminal record of scamming many women for their money.
Believing Kevin to have kidnapped her mother for the money, June has Javier look for clues as to their whereabouts in Colombia while she investigates and is told repeatedly that the FBI would handle the investigation.
FBI agent Elijah Park warns June that her interference could make it impossible for them to build a legal case against Kevin and tells her not to share the information she’s obtained illegally with him.
She traces Kevin’s past movements to a location in Nevada, where she talks to Jimmy, a man claiming to be a pastor at a Christian rehabilitation center for ex-convicts.
He tells her that Kevin has been rehabilitated and is genuinely in love with Grace.
Everything just spirals from there and gets weirder and harder for June to navigate or trust the authorities.
But, it’s definitely worth sitting through to the end of the flick because the resolution and ending are a perfect capstone to the overall stressful tone the movie has.
