Fun film #265moviereview
MISSING
In 2018, Aneesh Changaty wrote, directed and released a movie called SEARCHING. To me, that was an absolutely fantastic movie because I am lost when it comes to the notion of electronics and all the various apps that are available to people online. That movie absolutely fascinated me, causing me to learn more about the Internet and understand what happened in the movie. Everything in that movie occurred on the screen, perhaps, as a sad commentary on what our life has become. Yet it was a revolutionary way of storytelling, which I truly appreciated.
So when I heard that Netflix had a movie called MISSING, and it was a new 2023 release, it seemed kind of interesting so I put it on my watchlist and then I started watching it.
My jaw dropped. This movie is a standalone sequel to the 2018 movie even starting out with scenes from the first movie that were re-shot for this film.
But this movie, not so much. Don't get me wrong. I thought the movie was good, but it no way came close to the quality of its predecessor.
June is an 18 year old girl whose mom is swept off her feet by a man named Kevin and they fly on a trip to Colombia. During this trip, mom disappears and June uses all of her online online skills to track her mom down
Just like the prior movie everything is on the screen, there's notes, there's websites, there's, Gmail there's FaceTime and WhatsApp, there's all different sorts of apps that are being used in an Apple environment (I'm a PC guy and old so a lot of it is new to me)
What's nice about this movie is, unlike the first movie, which is just about a man trying to find his daughter, this movie has layer upon layer of deception, so although initially it seems tired and repetitious from the first movie, the storytelling becomes pretty darn good.
The actress at the center of it, Storm Reid, is absolutely terrific. Also, terrific is Joaquim de Almeida, a man in Colombia whom June employs via website to run several on site tasks for her so she can try to tack track mom down. Their repartee is part of the charm of this movie.
What differentiates this movie from the movie searching is that in the former, the online instances were almost unbroken, that is to say, they were from the perspective of the father looking for his daughter.
In this movie, however, most of the movie is from the perspective of the daughter looking for her mother but then the prospective changes (I don't want to give spoilers) and this changed perspective makes the movie lesser than his predecessor.
It's still a clever mystery, it's just not as good as his predecessor.
WATCH IT
3.5/5.