Missing Review

Missing is a standalone sequel to the screen time thriller Searching.

June Allen (Storm Reid) is an 18-year-old girl with an overly protective mother, Grace (Nia Long). When Grace goes on a trip to Columbia with her boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung), June gets a week of freedom. However, Grace and Kevin don’t return, June is forced to investigate from her computer in California.

2018’s Searching was a surprise hit. Produced on an $880,000 budget, it premiered at Sundance, earned critical acclaim, and Searching made $75.6 million. It was a unique feature that told its whole story through computer, phone, and TV screens. It was the little film that could. The producers obviously wanted to catch lightning in a bottle again.

Searching was a one-and-done story, so it told another mystery. Even though Missing had new characters and a new mystery, it was the same film as Searching. The only difference was it was a daughter looking for her mother instead of a father searching for his daughter. It made Missing a frustrating experience for viewers of Searching.

I watched Searching in preparation and it ended up being a bad move. I watched Missing and kept thinking of the original film. Both films open in a similar manner and it felt like a repeat as June had to research her mum and Kevin’s disappearance and pasts. There were lots of twists and turns as more and more information was revealed. Whilst Searching was fresh and original, Missing was hackney and uninspired.

However, due to Missing being a standalone sequel, Searching wasn’t required viewing. There was only one reference to Searching in Missing and it was right at the beginning. It was a nod and a wink to people who had seen Searching but it wasn’t important to Missing’s story. Because of this, new viewers would be the ones who would get the most out of Missing. They will see it as an inventive thriller as it was told through a computer screen and showed how much investigating could be done from a laptop.

The screenlife genre did seem like it could be the evolution of found footage genre. However, Missing showed the limitations of the screenlife genre. There were few stories for screenlife films to tell, unlike found footage which could extend to horror, sci-fi, drama, and comedy. Screenlife could only really tell mysteries or dramas. Missing felt the need to one-up the original and by doing that suspension of disbelief was pushed to breaking point. Certain plot points required a massive amount of coincidence for them to work.

One of the few new ideas Missing introduced was having the disappearance happen in another country, so June was forced to go on the internet to investigate. She had to research locations, view the camera footage, and use Google Translate to communicate with the hotel. June had to hire a man on the ground to investigate and find evidence for her. It was nice to see Joaquim de Almeida in a non-villainous role.

Missing was an unoriginal rehash of Searching that was desperately trying to recapture the magic of the 2018 film.