Directed By Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick

Starring – Storm Reid, Nia Long, Ken Leung

The Plot – When her mother (Long) disappears while on vacation in Colombia with her new boyfriend, June’s (Reid) search for answers is hindered by international red tape. Stuck thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, June creatively uses all the latest technology at her fingertips to try and find her before it’s too late. But as she digs deeper, her digital sleuthing raises more questions than answers…and when June unravels secrets about her mom, she discovers that she never really knew her at all.

Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, adult language, teen drinking, and thematic material.

(1) MISSING – Official Trailer (HD) – YouTube

POSITIVES

A spiritual sequel to a desktop thriller seemed like a far-fetched idea in concept, but Johnson and Merrick have capably picked up the ball of momentum that “Searching” director Aneesh Chaganty put down after his star-making turn, invigorating the franchise with a thicker sense of suspense and even originality that allows “Missing” to stand on its own without the help of its predecessor. In fact, it’s my opinion that the direction by the dastardly duo here is even better than Chaganty’s, combining a sleekly expressive presentation to window browsing with razor sharp editing schemes, to give the film an evolved cinematic appeal that cuts out all of the fluff and lag time of much-needed exposition. The turning of the tables from parent seeking child to child seeking parent is a most effectively varying take, this time triggering an overwhelming vulnerability to June’s dreaded disposition that only intensifies with each unsettling discovery, requiring her to look back on the tender moments that have unfortunately come to define her life. Also, as to where the first film captured an honestly candid depiction of publicized tragedy in the public eye of social media, “Missing” expands on the concept, this time sifting through TV dramatizations and Netflix specials that have been all the crazy among the serial killer community, with little to none of the likenesses in details or casting that are often the biggest problem in such adaptations. As for online navigating, as to where “Searching” remained faithful almost entirely to facetime, “Missing” instead jumbles the many webs of online communication in everything from Instagram, to Facebook, to even encrypted messaging, all in the means of expanding on the depth of the narrative while challenging the many preconceived notions that we have about the characters and their respective motives. This leads to a more times than not satisfying series of twists that reshapes the investigation every fifteen minutes or so, and with the benefit of a character who actually feels comfortably right at home within the confines of online browsing (A first for the subgenre), some intellectual tech is displayed terrifically, affording her the range to remain one step ahead of the audience, instead of a majority of the time the opposite being the case. On the subject of our leading lady, June, Storm Reid hands in a compelling turn full of grief, anger, and speculative uncertainty, all the while remaining faithful to the personality of a teenager that with it transcribes emotional juxtapositions to the many scenarios playing out before us. Joaquim de Almeida is also a breath of fresh air as Javi, June’s international investigator who brings with him an abundance of warmth, charisma, and appreciated levity to a script that is not afraid to get even darker than its original. As for the mystery itself, while the many twists supplanted to the engagement were 50/50 at best with what I was able to capably predict, the unforeseen avenues of exploration exercised a depth to the screenplay that I truly wasn’t expecting, in turn taking the story down some dark and devastating corridors that were matched feverishly from the urgency and consistency of the film’s pacing, using all of the 105 minutes of run time to flesh out an inter-family narrative that values the past almost, if not more, than the events unfolding in real time before us.

NEGATIVES

The opposite side of the succesful twists were the ones I was easy to sniff out from a script that periodically played its hand a bit too early within its interactions. Because there are lines of dialogue that focus on an aspect or a reaction that feels like they come completely out of nowhere, and because I’ve seen enough of these films to know better, it’s fairly evident that they will materialize into something bigger somewhere later on, and more times than not I accurately and frustratingly saw the writing on the wall, with one-dimensional characters who were only there to serve as a convenience to push the next plot point along forcefully. Speaking of convenience, the one aspect that “Missing” still isn’t able to allude for the subgenre are the abundance of logic holes with the concept that almost unanimously took me out of the investment each time the mystery unraveled another compelling layer. Whether in the easiness of password hacking while trying to access someone else’s account, or every single thing that June does being recorded by webcam, or even cameras being set-up and run in places that could definitely incriminate an antagonist, I simply wasn’t able to turn a blind eye to the lapses in logic that plagued the occasion, and because of such soured on a couple of the instances that depended heavily on their benefit, so as not to dig deeper with a more intelligently realistic way of attaining conflict resolution. Finally, while the third act does deliver on a riveting climax for our respective characters and story, it is a bit overly-dramatic in execution, convoluting the reveal and resolution in ways that bordered the silliest of Lifetime Television installments. This is where “Searching” had the knowledge and wherewithal to wrap matters on the reveal, as an actual physical confrontation, while intense, doesn’t feel synthetically earned in the confines of a desktop deep dive on the intellectual side.

OVERALL
“Missing” doesn’t quite have the screen life of its predecessor, thanks to an abundance of plot conveniences and an overtly dramatic climax, but it’s still a high-stakes, no-brakes mystery with enough twists and creative deviations to prosper its own reputable merits. Above all else, the duo of Johnson and Merrick craft an absorbingly energized engagement that manages to remain one step ahead of the audience at all times, giving us a satisfying sequel in the loosest of definitions that has given this unusual January another day in the sun.

My Grade: 7/10 or B-