Can someone say contrived?

The people who made this movie obviously can’t. The plot here in MISSING (2023), a brand-new thriller about an 18-year-old girl searching for her missing mother, tells a story so convoluted it’s laughable. It’s one of those movies where when the final twist is revealed, and we learn what the villain’s plan actually was, you’ll scratch your head and ask, well, why didn’t he just do that in the first place? Why devise this complicated ruse just to do what he ultimately does?

Then again, the point of MISSING isn’t its story, but the way it tells its story, which features the gimmick of having the entire movie play out on a computer screen. If this idea floats your boat, you might love MISSING. Otherwise, you might be in for a very long night at the movies. This gimmick has been done before. For example, it was featured in the movie SEARCHING (2018), which evidently was made by the same folks who made MISSING, although it’s a different creative team, a different set of writers and directors. MISSING is being called a sequel to SEARCHING, but it really isn’t. It’s an entirely new story that has nothing to do with the first movie. I wasn’t that crazy about SEARCHING, and similarly, I wasn’t crazy about today’s movie, MISSING.

MISSING tells the story of 18-year-old June (Storm Reid) who doesn’t get along with her mother Grace (Nia Long) at all. Things have been tough between them for a while, and they are both scarred by the untimely death of June’s father about ten years earlier. When Grace leaves for a vacation with her new boyfriend Kevin (Ken Leung), she leaves June home alone, which is fine with June because it means party time with her friends, although she is miffed at her mom for asking her best friend Heather (Amy Landecker) to check in on her regularly.

When June goes to the airport to pick up her mom at week’s end, her mom doesn’t show up. June calls the hotel in Colombia where her mom was staying and learns that her mom and her boyfriend left the hotel, but without their luggage. Finding this strange, June calls the U.S. Embassy in Colombia for their help, and not being satisfied by their response, decides to investigate on her own, and she does it all sitting in front of her computer. What she learns, and the revelations and twists and turns in the plot that this movie has to offer all come out of the soap operas of old, meaning they’re completely ludicrous.

And that’s the worst part of MISSING, the story it tells. It is flat out ridiculous. Before the movie is finished, June pretty much suspects nearly every character in this movie, even her mom of faking the whole thing, and then, when the final revelation is made, it’s just stupid. Without going into spoilers, if the villain’s goal in this one was to harm the person they wanted to harm, and then connect with the other person they wanted to connect with, there are far simpler ways to do it. Screenwriters Will Merrick and Nicholas D. Johnson, both of whom also directed this movie, seem to have concocted this plot just so they could tell a story all through computer use.

MISSING plays out like one big commercial for the internet. What June is able to do throughout this movie is admittedly impressive. There’s no doubt about that. She’s able to make phone calls, access video feeds, hire a man in Colombia to help her search for her mom, hack into private emails, access private photos, look up the personal history of people she doesn’t know, and she does this all from her bedroom using just a computer and her phone. The fact that we as a society have this kind of technological power is kinda neat. Screenwriters Merrick and Johnson, who based their screenplay on a story by Sev Ohanian, at least deserve credit for writing a story that makes full use of all these technological advances. But like I said, this movie plays out like a commercial, and commercials as we all know aren’t exactly truthful.

Everything that June does in this movie involving internet use not only works perfectly but works fast! I don’t know about you, but my experience online is that things don’t work perfectly, and they certainly don’t work quickly. Then again, I’m an adult of a certain age, and June is 18, and so maybe for most teenagers, the internet is that fast and precise. I have to admit, that while I didn’t enjoy the story in this one at all, I did marvel at the technology featured in it.

On the other hand, I spend most of my days looking at a computer screen and a smartphone, since basically here in 2023 nearly every aspect of life is conducted on a screen, from writing to teaching, to paying bills, checking the weather, socializing, it’s all screen time! So, the idea of watching a movie which in its entirety is taking place on a computer screen, does absolutely nothing for me. That’s the last thing I want to look at while watching a movie. So, I hope that this kind of movie storytelling doesn’t become more of a thing.

Storm Reid is okay in the lead role as June, although most of what she gets to do in this one is offer facial reactions to things playing out on screen. Likewise, Nia Long is fine as missing mommy Grace. Faring a bit better is Amy Landecker as Grace’s friend Heather, as we get to see various emotions from her, as her character goes through some changes in this one. Megan Suri is fun in a small role as June’s friend Veena, and veteran actor Joaquim de Almeida probably gives the best performance in the movie as the man on the ground in Colombia who helps June search for her mother. He’s the only character in the movie that in the brief time we see him we get to know him and know what he is thinking and feeling. Everyone else in this movie takes a backseat to the computer screen, and they come off as superficial.

The ending to this one is also a bit of a headscratcher. I won’t get into it, but it involves a TV show June was watching at the beginning of the movie.

I didn’t hate MISSING. I was impressed enough with the computer and internet aspects of the story to look past its convoluted plot, for a while, anyway. But as it goes along, it simply gets more contrived, to the point where it finally becomes just flat out stupid.

I know there’s some love out there for this one, as critics and fans alike have been saying good things about it. But it didn’t work for me.

So, while MISSING displays an intriguing gimmick where the entire film takes place on a computer screen, it simply can’t overcome the fact that it plays like one big commercial rather than a movie.

And that’s because what’s missing from this movie is a good story.

I give it two stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars- Excellent

Three stars- Very Good

Two stars- Fair

One star- Poor

Zero Stars- Awful