I finally got to see Missing, which is one of those rare January movies that isn’t completely disposable. Oh no, this one’s like a train wreck, and I mean that in a good way.
June’s dad died of a brain tumor when she was little, she and her mom moved from San Antonio to Los Angeles, and now her mom, Grace, is going on vacay to Columbia with her new boyfriend, Kevin. Grace’s friend, Heather, will come check on her every day and bring her meals, plus Grace leaves some emergency money for June and keeps reminding her to clear her voicemail.
Grace and June’s relationship has been a little bit strained as of late and it irks June that her mom is going off with Kevin on the weekend of Father’s Day, but on the other hand, she’s not too broken up about having some time to herself. In between Heather’s visits June parties so hard that she finally vomits one night at a party and wakes up with a monster hangover, and all of it is recorded on her various socials.
It just so happens that the hangover coincides with picking up Mom and Kevin at the airport, and June waits for hours with no sign of her mother. She goes home and starts digging, checking tourist livestreams and plunging herself down a research rabbit hole, which includes hacking her mother’s and Kevin’s social media profiles and search histories, only to find out more about both Kevin and her mom than she ever knew was possible. A lot starts to make sense very quickly.
She also connects with a detective in Columbia who kindly tries to help her as much as he can. Little does June realize the solution is much closer to home than she thinks.
Missing is an interesting film, and a seeming successor to 2018’s Searching. For the first hour or so, pretty much all the action takes place on social media and the World Wide Web, so much so that the product placement is wall-to-wall. Google. Instagram. DuckDuckGo. Apple. Windows. Bing. For starters. It’s like 2001’s Josie and the Pussycats but with tech companies.
It moves fast, too, and after a while the constant opening of tabs and the popping-up of alerts can get a little mind-numbing, but they also serve to mark time and move the story forward. I can’t say too much without giving spoilers, and believe me, no one is going to want that, but June’s research savvy is pretty impressive.
While Missing may seem a little confining at first, it doesn’t stay that way. When the third act hits, it hits hard and first impressions have to be altered. Storm Reid and Nia Long are believable as mother and daughter although their shared screen time is minimal, and the film really captures what it’s like when more of one’s life happens through a screen than in real life.
Missing also seems to sport an interesting subtext: Why is it that the good guys in the movie all use Apple products while the bad guys always use Windows and Android? Hmmmm…
While the movie does stretch the cred a little bit (my son noticed June downloading an impossibly large chat app in one scene), it has a slightly Rear Window feel to it, with June outside the action until the action finds her. Like June and like those proverbial train wrecks, we don’t want to look away.
Missing is currently streaming on Netflix. Rated PG-13.
My grade: B+
Principal Cast: Storm Reid, Nia Long, Tim Griffin, Ken Leung, Amy Landecker, Megan Suri, Lisa Yamada, Sharar Ali-Speakes, Jameel Shivji, Michael Segovia, Daniel Henney, Joaquim de Almeida, Lauren B. Mosley, Rick Chambers, Tracy Vilar
Written by Will Merrick, Nicholas D. Johnson, and Sev Ohanian.
Directed by Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick.