Missing
An emotionally charged thriller for our time, this spiritual successor to Searching plays out across a multitude of digital screens to eye-popping effect.
Screen and screen again: Storm Reid and Megan Suri
The Internet has come a long way since Searching rang alarm bells for an older generation. And that was just five years ago. Now there’s even more of our private lives, thoughts and desires stored on computer data servers – or, to put it euphemistically, “in the cloud.” And while hackers across the globe have become specialists at harvesting our most intimate secrets, so a new generation has not only come to navigate the Web’s more treacherous back streets, but to breathe it, think it, dream it. No doubt Gen Z will get more out of Missing, although older viewers may well find it something of an education, as well as an ill omen. Either way, Missing is a timely, ingenious cyber-mystery, indubitably a thriller for our time. Aneesh Chaganty’s Searching was a clever, cautionary thriller in which the action played out entirely on computer, tablet, CCTV and smartphone screens. Missing is its spiritual successor and now introduces the tech-savvy narrative skills of Will Merrick and Nick Johnson, USC graduates who previously co-edited Searching.
Like many of her peers, 18-year-old June Allen (Storm Reid) is constantly plugged into the Internet, like it’s a second brain, surfing search engines, retail sites and social media platforms (N.B. She doesn’t do WhatsApp). She has little time for the real world, let alone the pleas and protestations of her mom, who can’t differentiate between a phone call and FaceTime, bless her. But then June’s widowed mother, Grace (Nia Long), has her own distractions – she’s just met a lovely new man, Kevin (Ken Leung), on the dating app Luvly. He’s a 97% match, shares a love of the R&B group New Edition and has a really “cool tech job.” And Grace is leaving June to her own devices as she and Kevin fly out to Cartagena in Colombia for a romantic sojourn. All of which begs the question can we ever really know somebody we have just met on the Internet? For that matter, how much does June really know about her own mother?
Following in the tradition of the so-called screenlife movies Unfriended, Unfriended: Dark Web, Searching and Host, Missing relays every scene and plot twist via a mobile, computer or security screen. Initially, this might seem hard to follow, but the narrative legerdemain is so skilfully integrated that it sucks us along into an accelerating maelstrom, as if we are trapped on an infinite scrolling corkscrew. But there’s more to Missing than a series of revelatory tweets. The thing is, somebody’s computer histories might actually reveal more about them than everyday face-to-face contact. Missing is not only smart and gripping, but is a very scary reminder of how vulnerable we are to the unwanted prying of complete strangers.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Storm Reid, Joaquim de Almeida, Ken Leung, Amy Landecker, Megan Suri, Tim Griffin, Daniel Henney, Nia Long, Lauren B. Mosley.
Dir Will Merrick and Nick Johnson, Pro Natalie Qasabian, Sev Ohanian and Aneesh Chaganty, Screenplay Will Merrick and Nick Johnson, Ph Steven Holleran, Pro Des Kelly Fallon, Ed Austin Keeling and Arielle Zakowski, Music Julian Scherle, Costumes Sona Guekguezian and Lindsay Monahan, Sound P.K. Hooker.
Stage 6 Films/Screen Gems/Bazelevs Company/Search Party-Sony Pictures.
110 mins. USA. 2023. US Rel: 20 January 2023. UK Rel: 21 April 2023. Cert. 15.
