Missing

This weekend, Missing was released in theaters. Missing follows 18-year-old June as she must figure out the mystery behind her mother's sudden disappearance. In her search, she uncovers truths about her mother that make June question whether she even knew her mother at all. The main thing that makes this movie unique is that it is shown through the view on a computer or cell phone screen. Basically, we as the audience are watching June's computer screen and seeing the events of the movie play out through that. So if June is talking to someone, it is done through facetime or a phone call, when we see June it is through the self-camera on facetime. This way of seeing the movie was really interesting and drew me in to see how the movie pulled this off.

This movie achieves exactly what it is going for. It is a thriller mystery that keeps you intrigued until the end of the film. While the film was set on a computer screen the entire time, it hardly distracted me from the thrill of the film. I was still drawn in and interested the entire time. The movie does a great job of bringing twists and turns into the story. For some movies like this, I usually predict the twist before it happens. However, for this one, I never had any idea what was going to happen and was never expecting the twists when a new element was added to the story. The movie does a great job of keeping you guessing until the very end. In the same realm, the twists all made sense in connection to the rest of the story. For a lot of movies, they try to bring in this big twist which ends up making no sense with the rest of the story or established characters. This movie manages to connect everything together and allows the twists to explain what has happened logically. Never in this movie did I see one of these big revelations and think "well that's dumb". The movie also does a great job of tying in small details and making sure the audience focuses on the right thing allowing the audience to follow everything. Finally, I thought the overall concept of how the events were being shown was really interesting. I haven't seen a movie set through a computer screen before and I thought it worked reasonably well for the story they were trying to tell.

However, there are a few things that hold this movie back for me. One of the issues is there are sometimes lapses in logic. Most of the movie makes sense, however, some parts make me question why a certain character did what they did or why something was so easy to figure out even though certain characters should be so much smarter. It didn't diminish the story too much but certainly raised some questions at the time. The main issue I have with the film is the big final twist at the end. The direction they decided to go just really didn't sit well with me. It made sense and still explained everything but it just wasn't the answer that I wanted at all. The way certain relationships were set up just made the final revel seem really weird and mean-spirited. I think if they wanted to go in this direction, certain relationships should have really been set up differently. Up until this point I was really on board with the film. However, after the big reveal, it got knocked back a lot.

Overall, this was a really interesting and thrilling film that takes an interesting concept and pulls it off. However, the twist at the end really did not sit well with me and kept this movie from being rated much higher.

Score: 6.5/10 Grade: B-

Recommendation: If you liked the movie Searching or are a big fan of thrillers, check this one out. The twist may sit better for you than it did for me.