Review: Missing
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THE PLOT
When her mother disappears while on vacation in Colombia with her new boyfriend, June’s search for answers is hindered by international red tape. Stuck thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, June creatively uses all the latest technology at her fingertips to try and find her before it’s too late. But as she digs deeper, her digital sleuthing raises more questions than answers - and when June unravels secrets about her mom, she discovers that she never really knew her at all.
QUICK REVIEW
Back in 2018 the film Searching stunned audiences and critics to become one of the more popular and favored films of that year. Perhaps no other movie has used modern technology so effectively to convey a story through the medium of film. On a personal level it was one of my absolute favorite movies in a year for film that I wasn’t very fond of overall.
Now about five years later we get a sequel with Missing, but whereas the first movie was about a desperate father trying to find his missing daughter, this one turns that on its head by following a desperate daughter searching for her missing mother. With Storm Reid playing the former and Nia Long the latter.
Inevitably there will be questions on how similar this plays to its predecessor. Like the first there are some similar turns, but they’re done with their own twists in comparison, and it does reverse some things from the previous one on its head including how much more important to the story the first clip is and trying to fake you out by making you believe it’ll repeat the every same outcomes of Searching. And just like the first film, it does a great job of making every little clue matter including ones that seem like filler moments at first.
But I think where the movie does slip up and come up short to its predecessor is that unlike that film’s ability to make everything feel real in the way it was edited and presented, this one uses some flashy editing techniques and relies on cheap attempts at recreating news coverage that are the very things I praised Searching for not relying on. It also has an absolutely insane twist to set up the finale that borders on jumping the shark until the script smartly explains the pitfalls of such a story beat away with some logic but nonetheless is a bit of a stretch.
But is this a good thriller to go and see at the local theatre? I think it is. Yes, it by no means comes close to the genius of its predecessor but it’ll still give you moments where you’ll gasp and be on the edge of your seat. You should find yourself just as invested in finding June’s mother as you were with finding David’s daughter.
INTIAL GRADING
