[ad_1]
Missing (M, 111mins) Directed by Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick ***½
Grace (Nia Long) and June Allen (Storm Reid) have been through a lot together.
For the past 12 years, Grace has been a solo parent, while June has had to grow up without a father.
Relocating from San Antonio to Los Angeles was just as traumatic, although now June at least considers Van Nuys home.
At 18 though, she’s had enough of her mother’s overly-protective overcompensating. She gets annoyed at Grace’s endless requests for June to clear voicemail space, constant misuse of Siri and new boyfriend Kevin (Ken Leung).
That means June has mixed feelings about Grace and Kevin’s weekend away in Colombia. On the one hand, she annoyed that she’s away for that most difficult day of the year for her – Father’s Day – but on the flip-side, there’s an opportunity for a little bit of freedom – to party! There’s just the small matters of shaking off her mom’s best friend Heather (Amy Landecker) and transferring the “emergency money” left by Grace to pal Veena (Megan Suri) for liquor-purchasing purposes.
READ MORE:
* Women Talking: A provocative, stunning drama that’s 2023’s first must-see movie
* What’s Love Got to Do with It? The cross-cultural rom-com that’s perfect for modern times
* The Son: The sins, success of The Father loom over Jackman, Dern’s emotive drama
A little over-imbibing aside, come Monday morning everything has gone swimmingly, except June has now slept in, running late to pick up the travelers from the airport and the house is a total mess. Hiring cleaners over the internet to sort the latter while she’s away, June rushes out the door, but hours later there’s still sign of either Kevin or Grace at LAX.
After texts go unanswered and FaceTimes won’t connect, June makes a desperate call to their hotel in Colombia. Using Google Translate, she manages to establish that they left without their bags on the first day they arrived. Yes, security footage is available, but only in person and they wipe it every 48 hours.
Missing is a “spiritual sequel” to 2018’s groundbreaking thriller Searching.
With time running out and the US Embassy seemingly little or no help, June finds a cut-rate Cartagena-based odd-jobs-man – Javier Ramos (Joaquim de Almeida) – online. It is he who makes the bold suggestion that instead of continuing the rather fruitless search to find Grace, maybe she should look into Kevin.
What she finds though, after a little digital lateral thinking and hacking, is not only not what she wanted, but revelations with potentially nightmarish consequences.
“I’ve already lost one parent, I can’t lose her too,” Grace weeps.
Supplied
Storm Reid’s June Allen finds herself in an increasingly fraught situation when her mother Grace goes Missing.
A “spiritual sequel” to 2018’s groundbreaking and gripping “screenlife” thriller Searching, Missing boasts a similar Gone Girl-meets-The Net vibe, as it constantly shifts audience sympathies, delivers more than one jaw-dropping twist and makes full use of its tricksy conceit.
Editors on the original film, directors Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick (who also serve as two of the quartet of writers) certainly keep you on your toes and scanning the full frame as they weave their tale mainly via June’s Macbook, iPhone and Apple Watch (and yes, there are occasions when it does feel like a hard sell for the tech that Steve Jobs built, although there also “plugs” for services offered by that guy from that 2010 David Fincher movie too).
As well rewarding vigilant “scanners” with clues, Easter Eggs and japes, Johnson and Merrick also have fun with the world’s current obsession with true-crime dramas, showing us a snippet of a certain streaming service’s “Unfiction” take on Searching’s story of the “disappearance of Margot Kim”.
Supplied
Missing boasts a similar Gone Girl-meets-The Net vibe to fellow “screenlife” movie Searching, as it constantly shifts audience sympathies, delivers more than one jaw-dropping twist and makes full use of its tricksy conceit.
If the tech used here somewhat satisfyingly makes that 2018 film now look a little dated and quaint, Missing is a little let down by a rather predictable, formulaic ending that is a textbook ‘90s slasher movie climax. And while it did create that same sense of intimacy and tension generated by Searching, I felt a little more invested in David Kim’s (John Cho) plight there because he was a potentially unreliable protagonist.
However, if you’re not into horror and have been Searching for a long time to find something that can enthral, engross and unnerve both parents and teens – at the same time – this is not a movie you want to be Missing out on.
Missing is now screening in cinemas nationwide.
[ad_2]