Repetitive mystery still entertains
Back in 2018, my number two movie of the year was Searching, an innovative thriller about a father’s search for his missing teenage daughter that was told entirely through modes of modern technology. Fast forward five years later, and members of that filmmaking team have made essentially the same movie, only this time we have a teenage daughter searching for her missing mother. The result is a film that, while no longer fresh in style, at least has a winning formula that keeps us entertained, even as we’re no longer impressed by the narrative concept.
With Missing, Will Merrick and Nicholas D. Johnson, who were editors on Searching, take the reins as screenwriters and co-directors. Story credits go to Aneesh Chaganty, Searching’s director, and Sev Ohanian, Chaganty’s co-writer on that film. That the foursome would make such a similar film to their first is disappointing, but not entirely unexpected, given Searching’s critical success. Maybe now that the tech-told mysteries are out of their system, the quartet’s third picture could be a romantic comedy or something totally different, since this genre feels played out after round two.
But in the meantime, what we have here is sort of a Searching 2.0, with a brief nod to that story in Missing’s opening scene, as high school senior June (Storm Reid, A Wrinkle in Time) watches footage from that precursor picture’s case on a true-crime documentary series on her laptop. That June is a fan of such a show quickly lets us know that she’s curious and has an interest in sleuthing.
June gets the chance to test her investigating chops when her mother, Grace (Nia Long), fails to return as scheduled after a vacation to Colombia with her new boyfriend Kevin (Ken Leung). When calls and texts to Grace go unanswered, June must use her wits and super-savvy tech skills to uncover what happened to her mother. The filmmakers throw a lot of dead ends and red herrings our way — with some making more sense and landing better than others — but Reid is such an engaging screen presence that we’re never bored watching her come up with ways to find answers that the hapless detective on the case (Daniel Henney) doesn’t seem to have thought of.
Just as in Searching, then, Missing’s entire story plays out via June’s laptop and cell phone and various apps, which serves to remind us just how pervasive technology has become in our lives, for better or worse. Some moments, though, demand a certain suspension of disbelief: would a laptop or phone camera really be able to capture a lot of what we overhear and witness? But the characters and mystery are absorbing enough to allow us to roll with some of the more unrealistic plot mechanisms to see how things play out. And while the ending feels like a little bit of a let down, the suspense of getting there makes up for the slight fizzle.
And on a local note: fans of Searching may remember that it took place in San Jose. Missing is set in Van Nuys, but early in the film we get a fun Nor Cal name drop: we learn that June is UC Davis bound in the fall. Go Aggies!
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Missing opens today at Bay Area theaters.
