Missing

Searching was one of 2018's real surprises, as well as one of my picks for the great films of that year.  Told entirely through the lens of computer, cell phone, and video cameras, it chronicled a father (played by John Cho) and his desperate search for his missing teenage daughter.  The movie caught me totally by surprise with how effective it was able to draw genuine drama and suspense from such a simple concept limited by the fact that all of it was filmed on personal camera devices, and it had some effective plot twists as well that I genuinely did not see coming.

Made on a budget of under $900,000, the movie went on to gross over $75 million worldwide.  We certainly didn't need a follow up, but when you make that kind of profit in Hollywood, you get one, so here is Missing.  And while not really a sequel, it uses the same central gimmick and idea.  Like before, the movie has been filmed entirely on personal cameras, computers and phones, and it once again centers on a mysterious disappearance of a family member.  This time, instead of a middle aged father, the central character is 18-year-old June, played by the talented Storm Reid.  Making the main character someone who grew up in the tech generation, and knows all the ins and outs of internet sleuthing is a great idea on how to differentiate this film from the original.  Ms. Reid also brings a large amount of nuance to her performance as she desperately seeks information on the whereabouts of her mother (Nia Long), who disappears while on vacation in Columbia with her new boyfriend (Ken Leung).

For the first hour or so, I was totally on board.  The movie was using its gimmick brilliantly, and didn't seem like it was just rehashing the success of the earlier formula.  I was involved in the early bits of the mystery that it was dropping our way, and I was enjoying the casual friendship that June slowly builds with a local man over in the city her mom was vacationing (Joaquim de Almeida) who helps her look up any possible clues over video chats.  But then, the movie slowly begins to sink into generic thriller territory, and my heart quite literally sunk.  There are few experiences at the movies more disheartening than watching a movie you were previously into start to sink into cliches and over the top performances.  I kept on hoping that the writers would be able to pull off a miracle, but they don't.

Missing desperately wants to surprise us, so it piles on one plot twist on top of another to the point of madness.  Every time we seem to learn something, we suddenly find out a few scenes later that things are not what we seem.  I don't mind it when movies play with my expectations.  In fact, I wish more would do it.  But when it becomes the sole point of the film, and it does it over and over, the movie is not playing with the audience, but instead laughing at us for trying to figure it out.  Are we supposed to be smacking our foreheads in disbelief with each new revelation?  I honestly don't know what the filmmakers are trying to do.  In their desperation to be clever, they instead end up being overly convoluted.

What made Searching work is that it felt real.  I bought every second of the film, and was genuinely surprised near the end when the information came out that changed what I thought I knew.  Here, as the secrets, reveals, and red herrings piled up, I constantly knew I was watching a scripted thriller.  I especially knew I was watching a very bad scripted thriller when the third act popped up, and it started throwing psycho movie cliches into the mix, all the while desperately trying to figure out ways as to why we are watching this on a handheld camera.  The movie eventually strains belief so much that it snaps, and we know we're being manipulated.  The spell of the movie is broken, and I watched the climax unfold with silent disbelief.  I wanted to go back to the earlier part of the film that felt like the movie was going to follow in the footsteps of the first, and be a believable and fun time.

Missing gets so wrapped up in throwing us off course, only to end with such a predictable and schlocky conclusion.  This is one of those movies that's not worth going through the trouble of all the hoops it forces you to jump through in order to figure it out.  It also feels like a bait and switch, as the first half is grounded in the same reality as the earlier movie, only for it to go off the edge.

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