Jonah Naplan January 21, 2023
“Missing” is a very effective thriller, even if it is one that I wish were a bit more tightly pressed. This sequel (of a sort) to the wildly entertaining and innovative 2018 film “Searching” is more ambitious than its predecessor, but unsurprisingly feels a lot more bloated, especially when it tries to wrap everything up in the conclusion. It works, but I think there is a better, more compressed version of “Missing” that isn’t trying so hard to throw everything at us with a breakneck pace from the very start, taking a bit more care into making sure the audience can catch up and breathe.
June, a strong performance from Storm Reid, is the average 18-year-old girl, frustrated by her mother’s superfluous restrictions, and annoyed by the name she’s often given, “Junebug.” Her mother, Grace (Nia Long), goes on a trip to Cartagena, Colombia with her new boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung) but when they suspiciously do not return to the LAX airport as scheduled, June grows paranoid, especially when her “where are you?” text messages to Grace are time and time again met with no response. So June becomes a detective, logging into private Gmail accounts, talking on the phone with the receptionist at a Colombian hotel, and watching hidden videos that she was never meant to see. June uncovers some pretty deep secrets, leading to some big plot twists, the best and juiciest of which I won’t dare spoil in this review.
Writers Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian—both returning from “Searching”—and directors Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick have here crafted a strong, thrilling narrative similar to their previous, but one that is sometimes stripped of its originality and unique novelty. In both films, the entire movie’s story is told through screens, and only screens. Whether that’s cell phones, laptops, TVs, security cameras, or news reports, both films are simply brilliant in how they engineer their concept around exclusively digital storytelling. It’s a supreme high wire act that feels especially relevant in today’s world, a reality in which everything is run by technology.
“Missing” is grounded by that simple realism, but in a different way than “Searching.” In that film, a middle-aged father was desperately trying to find his daughter, simultaneously figuring out how to use the technology along the way. But in “Missing” we center around a character who is already well-versed in websites like Spotify, Venmo, TikTok, FaceTime, and Instagram. Adults can relate more to the confusion of John Cho’s character in “Searching,” while kids can resonate with June in this film. June’s detective skills are highly elevated by her ability to hop between tabs at a dizzying rate, and learn how to problem solve using her technological skills. Take for instance the quintessential scene I mentioned before, where June calls an exclusively Spanish-speaking Colombian hotel receptionist. June is able to communicate with this man once she hops on Google Translate and starts converting Spanish phrases to English.
June is a resourceful young woman, and enlists the help of a Taskrabbit errand runner named Javi (Joaquim de Almeida, who provides the movie’s biggest comic relief), to help her uncover surveillance footage of the Colombian areas at and around the hotel. Much of the little bits and pieces of information that the trailer for “Missing” conveyed, convinced me that I knew what was really going on. But the trailer is smart in showing fragments that usher the viewer to come to a very specific conclusion about how it all ends. Yes, all of the pieces the trailer shows are important, but they don’t link together in the way you might anticipate.
I particularly appreciated the extensive use of Ring doorbell cameras in the movie. June gets notifications on her computer each time there’s motion outside, and this leads to some great evocation of fear on the writers’ part. In fact, there’s a particular surprise involving a live photo that I honestly believe is one of the best executed twists I have seen in any movie ever.
What is a well-made thriller without its twists and turns? “Missing” seeks to find the answer to this question, but ends up employing too many big moments to a third act that feels a wee bit too grand for the small scale story that was the rest of the movie. There’s a meta-ness to the plot involving a Netflix TV show parody, and that part alone is believable enough, at least until a somewhat confusing conclusion that takes a head-scratching big jump forward to several months later.
“Missing” isn’t perfect, but it’s hammered home by strong performances from Storm Reid and Nia Long and also brilliant writing that always keeps us on the edge of our seat. It’s a movie enamored with the internet, but thankfully isn’t one blindsided away from telling a compelling story.
Now playing in theaters.