Missing is a unique mystery drama that focuses on the use of technology to retell the story of a kidnapping and estranged parent relationship.
The movie is told from the perspective of an 18-year-old girl named June (Storm Reid), who is presented as having a difficult relationship with her overprotective mother, Grace Allen (Nia Long), and Grace’s boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung).
When her mother goes missing on a vacation to Columbia, June has to face the reality of international and legal restrictions, along with the forceful attack of the media as she does everything in her power to locate Grace from their home in Los Angeles.
The mystery is told through the lens of cameras on laptops, phones, security cameras, and more. Rather than watching from a third-person perspective, the audience is presented as literal viewers and can see only what each small lens allows in the scene. This choice to tell the story adds to the overall immersion of the movie by dropping subtle hints in the background and allowing the audience to only follow what June is doing physically on her computer or searching up. The audience knows only as much as June can slowly discover.
In addition, Missing depicts the real-world consequences of technology and social media. June is shown hacking into Google accounts, dating sites, and more by using logical thinking that real teens could employ. On the other hand, the kidnapper is also shown abusing technology to be able to watch how the investigation is going and how far June gets in her search.
There is also a social commentary throughout the movie regarding June and her teen friends liking crime shows, with a depiction of June becoming frustrated with how the media treats her mom’s case like these fictional retelling shows she once enjoyed. This commentary on media portrayal and online discussion and its effects on the victims of a case inspire questions about real-life crimes and whether media portrayals of cases are positive or negative.
Overall, the movie was very immersive, and suspenseful and left some after-thoughts in my mind when it was over. It was well-paced with a unique storytelling perspective and a good depiction of how real-life cases are treated and how technology can be abused to benefit or harm an individual. However, the movie does have several cuts in places that leave the audience having to put the plot together on their own and the ending felt rushed and took additional thought to comprehend. Out of a score of 10, in my opinion, the movie sits at an eight.