MISSING (2023) – Review

So do you have lots of friends, or more likely older relatives, that are leery of the new online technology? Of course, you’re not otherwise you wouldn’t be here, but many folks are still skittish. Well here’s a new flick that shows how the worldwide web (and its hardware and software) can be useful, even life-saving. Hold on you Luddites, it’s not propaganda or an “infomercial” popping up on the TV in the “wee hours”. No this is an “in theatres” feature film, and a thriller/mystery to boot. Oh, and it’s all told on different “monitor screens”, with the “big projection screen” becoming your “portal’ into the ongoing events. It’s as though you’re sitting right next to the story’s heroine as she desperately scrolls and clicks in order to locate a parent who’s gone MISSING. And we’re booting up…

After we view several random sites with different messages, the screen shifts to some home video footage from over a dozen years ago. A young couple is settled into an inherited rural home with their little girl, “Refresh” today, and the girl is now an eighteen-year-old woman named June Allen (Storm Reid) who lives with her now widowed mother Grace (Nia Long). As if Father’s Day wasn’t tough enough for June, mom is jetting down to Columbia for a romantic getaway with her new beau Kevin (Ken Leung). June’s not a fan of his (to put it mildly), but this will be an excuse for a big house party since mom has deposited a nice “chunk of change” in June’s online account (y’know, for meals and emergencies). Naturally June parties way “too hard” and barely gets to the airport to pick up Grace and Kevin. June rushes to the baggage claim and waits. And waits, And…the airline has no record of the duo on the flight. And Grace is not responding to June’s calls and texts. A frantic June returns home and calls the hotel in Columbia. After dealing with language issues, they tell her that the couple was last seen at the front entrance yesterday. They do have security cameras, but they’re automatically erased every 48 hours. June springs into action online. The US embassy doesn’t seem to grasp the urgency, so June hires a Taskrabbit “gig” freelancer named Javi (Joaquim de Almeida) to do the legwork. As he heads to the hotel, June does some “hacking” legwork and tracks the “date app” romance of her mom and Kevin. She finds that he has a shady past including online fraud (“catfishing” crimes). As June dives deeper into the internet “rabbit hole”, the mysteries and deceptions occurring across the globe will plunge the young woman into deadly danger at the computer desk in her LA home.

As the audience surrogate, Reid delivers a compelling, complex performance as the often petulant only child suddenly thrust into the role of investigator and potential rescue. In the opening sequences, June is openly hostile to her mother, often lashing out with little provocation. Perhaps her anger and constant yearning for her papa makes pushes her into “self-medication” numbness in the big party scene. But that trip to the airport sobers her up quickly as she becomes a woman with a mission using all of her tech “P.I.” savvy to stave off her sense of panic in holding on to her only parent. Long shines as the title focus, conveying Grace’s frustration with the increasingly distant daughter while hoping to begin a new life and shed the sorrows of the past. Her new beau is played with an awkward aloofness by Leung who gets to flesh out his role as the duo’s interloper in a series of brief video dating posts. Not only aiding on the ground but connecting and comforting June is de Almeida’s affable but haunted “working stiff” Javi. He’s the sympathetic listener that he needs, but we find out that his new “gig’ may be the atonement needed for his own fractured family relationship.

Happily, anyone concerned with the storytelling style will be pleased to know that you won’t suffer “screen monitor eyestrain” in viewing the multiple formats (a “Skype-style refective video tab allows us to see June and others most of the film). Plus it may be a nice test to sharpen your visual comprehension skills as fun little windows and banners pop in the background areas, mixing real web services and funny parody names. A big plus is that many of those involved had a hand in several “web screen” thrillers over the past few years. Producer Timor Bekmambetov and directors Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick (who co-wrote this with Sev Ohanian and Aneesh Chaganty) worked on the excellent PROFILE, the UNFRIENDED films, and SEARCHING (an unconnected prequel to this new flick). They try hard to keep the story zipping along at a fairly brisk pace, while amping up the tension, and taking a few satiric potshots at the streaming “true crime” binging addicts. Plus the disorienting opening sequences “pay off” for those keeping tracks. Oh, but the filmmakers may be a bit “too clever for their own good” or for the good of the movie as the big action finale “reveal” becomes needlessly convoluted with “wonky” nonsensical character motivations and Rube Goldberg-like “master plans”. Audiences may relish the cyber-journey of June, but a truly satisfying resolution seems to be, uh, MISSING.

3 Out of 4

MISSING is now playing in theatres everywhere