Title: Missing
Rating: 3 Stars
Missing would be a pretty average missing person film with the exception of its gimmick, which is that the film is entirely filmed via computer screens and mobile devices. This is not a sequel, but the second part of an anthology to the film Searching, which apparently used the same gimmick. I have not watched Searching. It was made back in 2018, so it might be interesting to compare the online presence of 2023 with 2018.
June (Storm Reid) is Grace’s (Nia Long) eighteen year old daughter. June’s father died of cancer when she was a young girl. Since then, June has come to resent her mother’s overprotective ways. Grace goes off to Colombia with her boyfriend Kevin (Ken Leung). When June arrives at the airport to pick them up, they never show. Concerned, June calls the hotel in Colombia and learns that they checked out but left their luggage. She finds the Colombian equivalent to TaskRabbit and hires Javier (Joaquim de Almeida) to investigate on her behalf. From there, the plot twists and turns in many unexpected directions.
Since the film is so new, I won’t throw in too many spoilers. Let’s just say that Grace has an unexpected past. Kevin has an unexpected past. The FBI get involved. The Colombian police get involved. Even a church that specializes in rehabilitated ex-cons makes an appearance.
If you’ve seen films like this before, the plot, even though it contains surprises, follows along a fairly predictable course. People are not what they seem. Even you learn something new about a person, that person is still not what they seem. If genre missing person films are your thing, then sit back in your lazy chair because it’s going to be a comfortable ride.
Where it strives for innovation is in its presentation. As I’ve said, the film is 100% electronic screens. The action mostly takes place on June’s Mac. She’s got multiple windows open, including one that is an open window with the camera pointing at her. She has FaceTime phone calls. She has WhatsApp phone calls. She hacks into gMail accounts. She hacks into dating sites. She watches live footage of police raids. She watches cameras mounted at tourist sites. She watches news feeds and reads articles. All of the time, she’s also texting with friends.
When the action moves away from June’s Mac, we see the action through her Apple Watch or security cameras.
Considering the fact that the large bulk of the action rests on June sitting at her desk at her computer, a lot rides upon Reid’s performance and the cinematic wizardry of making screen time mesmerizing.
Reid does good work as June. She doesn’t necessarily have a whole lot to work with, character wise. She plays a character that is exasperated by her slightly overbearing mom but becomes terrified when she’s missing and comes to realize how important her mom is to her. This is a well trod path, character wise. but Reid makes it believable.
The film is also pretty effective at making June’s screen time interesting, if not always compelling. Building a narrative through bread crumb accumulation of information is a pretty big challenge. The film does do a good job of showing June slowly, digitally, unravelling the mysteries. Even if there was actually little action outside of a computer screen, tension did build during the course of the film.
There are themes in this film that are larger than just the telling of a story. One is that there is no escaping from a digital presence. Everywhere you go, everything you do, you are dropping digital breadcrumbs. Unless you want to rent out Kaczynski’s Unabomber shack in Montana, there is no hiding. This film shows how exposed we all really are.
Similarly, if we are not careful protecting our digital identity, it’s very easy to hack into our accounts, learn our secrets, or even assume our identity. By this time, we should all know this. Obviously, for the sake of dramatic tension as well as the practical realities of a two hour film, the hacking time was quite compressed, but it doesn’t change the fact that, for most of us, it would be relatively simple for a motivated, experienced person to tear apart our digital footprint.
One more subtle issue that was raised was the truth of digital information. On the one hand, video is a reflection of reality. However, in the hands of a person with access to the raw video, it can be edited to show a view that distorts reality. I’m not even talking deep fakes or something sophisticated like that. Simple edits of a video can dramatically change context with the video consumer being none the wiser.
My only quibble that rang false with me was the fact that June constantly had her Mac camera on at all times. Sure, you’d have the camera on during video conferencing like FaceTime, but having it open at all hours? I’m not a Mac user, but I can’t imagine staring at a prominent window on my screen that is just me typing away for hours on end.
It was an interesting attempt at creating a film using innovative techniques. As is often the case with such films, the filmmakers concentrated so much on the technical innovation that the story itself, while certainly well executed, was not quite as creatively innovative.
dorkenstein 