Missing

Missing (2023)

81% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 80 reviews)

Runtime: 111 minutes

Directed by: Nicholas D. Johnson/Will Merrick

Starring: Storm Reid, Joaquim de Almeida, Ken Leung, Nia Long, Tim Griffin

From: Sony

Not a bad film to choose as my first 2023 picture. Back in 2018 I saw Searching; me not remembering too much of it from that one theatrical viewing may sound bad, but I still have fond memories of how well the conceit worked and it felt so fresh. Might as well see its standalone sequel the same way, right? I hadn't seen Joaquim de Almeida in a new movie in at least a decade; then again, the last time for Nia Long was almost THIRTY years ago! She played a 43 year old although in real life she was like 51 when this was filmed... she was totally believable as a 43 year old.

Instead of a father searching online for his missing teenage daughter and the entire POV is his computer screen, 18 year old Storm Reid is trying to find missing mother Long, who vanished in Colombia alongside her boyfriend. The trailers appeared to reveal everything (they didn't, but it was still too much) so if you've seen those, it is not a secret that boyfriend Kevin has a sketchy past. Via social media, Google and brute force hacking she is able to assist in trying to crack the case. Perhaps it is not the most plausible of scenarios but at least it's thrilling-this leans more into the thrills than Searching did-and there are message of how it's not good that TikTok and YouTube “sleuths” offer baseless speculation on true crime mysteries while only possessing a small fragment of all the data in the case that law enforcement has.

What was most appreciated by me: this uses the same basic concept as Searching yet isn't a carbon copy of that; enough changes were made to make this feel fresh. It was nice to see the familiar faces although Storm Reid (who I had only seen before in The Invisible Man) was the highlight as lead girl June. At first she's a bratty teenager but as expected, that attitude changes. It once again successfully captures time spent with computer and phone screens; this includes the 9th level of Hell known as CAPTCHAS. Quite simply, this was an engrossing tale the whole way through so I'll deem this as “pretty good.”