Missing

 

Directors Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick take many of the elements from their 2018 feature Searching and reshape them for Missing's story about a teen-age daughter (Storm Reid) who uses internet tools to find her mother (Nia Long), who has disappeared while on a vacation.

In the earlier film, an anxious father (John Cho) searches his daughter's online network for clues to her whereabouts. This leads to a myriad of dead ends, mis-directions, false identities and a big concluding reveal. Missing is structured similarly and delivers a satisfying number of "a-ha" moments for audience members engaged enough to stick with it.

Young and surly June (Reid) is left in her Van Nuys home when her mom (Long) takes off for a weekend in Colombia with her new beau Kevin (Ken Leung). June, who continues to miss her absent father (Tim Griffin) after more than a dozen years gone, is not amused and throws a blow-out party with her besties.

When her mother fails to return home, June uses her laptop to conduct her own investigation. All is not as it seems, by any stretch, and the film will reward viewers who suspend disbelief and allow the implausible to move the narrative along.

Both Missing and the earlie Searching appear to be making statements about the pervasiveness of mediated relationship, familial detachment and distrust while also offering an argument that these conditions, oddly enough, can be healed by the very technologies that appear to be threatening them -- and it doesn't require powering down your laptop or putting your phone on "silence."

Hmmm. That's a "bold" message from one of the world's leading tech companies -- Sony.