Review of Missing, directed by Will Merrick and Nick Johnson

Missing was yet another movie I was procrastinating on for the longest time. I kept getting the trailers at my local AMC when I was going to see other movies, and when it came out, I kept booking a ticket and then chickening out of seeing it in-person.

I was on winter break then, so it would’ve been perfect it I ended up going to see it instead of sitting at home and rotting in bed while watching Netflix. Well, as it turns out, I never ended up seeing Missing in theaters and then I promptly forgot it existed until summer break in 2023.

It was a May day with a pretty nice breeze when I opened up Netflix and saw in the recently added section of my account that Missing was one of the most recent additions to the platform. And since I had nothing better to do except procrastinate on the things that I should’ve been doing in that moment, I pressed play, sat back, and began watching.

Onwards with the review!

When June’s mother goes missing after a vacation to Columbia, she’s going to search for her.

We’re introduced to the protagonist, June, and the format of the movie almost immediately from the get-go after a brief set-up showing June’s deceased father James.

She’s the typical rebellious teenager who rolls her eyes whenever her mother expresses concern for her whereabouts, and at the start of the movie, her mother, Grace, is preparing to go on vacation with her boyfriend Kevin.

The way this movie is set up is that it’s almost purely told through a filming/recording setup, such as the Mac’s camera watching June as she scrolls through the Internet, or her face as she FaceTimes or WhatsApp calls someone with her phone/computer.

With her mother about to leave, June is preparing to throw raging parties at their place because she can.

With only her mother’s friend, Heather, to check up on her, June is going to be left completely alone to her own devices. Her only instruction is to pick up Kevin and Grace from LAX when the time comes, and it does come.

June shows up in the airport and in a scene meant to represent hours passing, her mother and Kevin never show up. The FBI and American consulate in Colombia are contacted, but they cannot really do anything upfront since they don’t have jurisdiction in Colombia.

So June decides to take matters into her own hands. She goes on the Colombia equivalent on TaskRabbit and hires a guy with barely three stars to his reviews, Javier, and tells him to go to the hotel and check out the security footage before it expires and it’s too late, especially since the FBI is dragging their foot. Javier does that and is unable to find anything while going to the hotel, while June’s friend, Veena, goes off on suggestions she hacked from a television show she watches.

June suspects Kevin is behind all of this and hacks into his email, tracking his location through emails and purchases he’s made.

She sends Javier to find the hardware store he was last seen with Grace at, while the FBI seemingly has evidence that Grace and Kevin were kidnapped in Colombia. June makes contact with a guy in Nevada because she traced Kevin to him, but as it turns out, that will be kind of her downfall towards the end by revealing her location. Javier and June continue working together, and her mother’s case blows up on social media and the Internet, affecting June’s mental health.

June also suspects Heather, who she ends up finding dead at her office. As it turns out, Heather is a lawyer that Grace hired to help completely changed her own identity, just like Kevin had earlier (June went into his email and discovers he went by a ton of different names, scammed women, and supposedly changed his ways after coming out of jail).

The news and journalists uncovered Grace wasn’t who she says she was, and when June is kidnapped by the guy from Nevada and finds her mom imprisoned in his house, she learns that this guy was his actually father. Kevin was found in Colombia and surrendered, getting shot by the police, and was implied to have actually changed his ways.

In a final face-off, June and Grace survive the insane situation despite Grace having been shot in the process.

She learns how to reconcile with her mother, checking in with how express where she is and that she loves her, leaving their relationship better than ever. Wish we got to know if Grace loved Kevin back though! That ending to their story wasn’t the neatest I think. We do get a glimpse of how they stay in contact with Javier, which is a nice touch.

Overall Thoughts

Missing is an interesting movie, especially with the decisions that went into how it was filmed. I thought that was a really unique approach to the way the movie could unfold for the viewers visually, although it definitely comes with its limitations.

It also leans into the aspect that June is a Generation Z girl who has the tech smarts to know to call Siri through a camera watching them, adding in some interesting twists and detective work only a digital native could figure out.

I thought the story offers some nice curveballs throughout as well, making the pacing work really well for this kind of story.

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