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Film Review: Missing

Updated: Apr 6, 2023

Welcome back to the blog everyone. I recently saw the screenlife thriller film Missing, and I wanted to share my spoiler-free thoughts. Directed by Will Merrick and Nick Johnson; and starring Storm Reid, Joaquim de Almeida, Ken Leung, Amy Landecker, Daniel Henney and Nia Long; the film sees a teenage girl attempting to find her mother when she and her new boyfriend go missing on a trip to Colombia.


When a thriller film is good, by damn is it good. But Missing has far too many issues that keep it from being great. In fact, I will go as far as to say that even though I had no expectations for this film (due to my uninterest in it), I was severely disappointed. This film could have been something very special.


I want to start my review by saying that the first half of the film is terrible. Stiff acting and a terrible pace make for an experience in which I was starting to get very bored. And the format of the film was drastically different than anything I have ever seen. For the duration of the film, I could not shake the feeling that I was watching a diary being played out. Between the 50th and 60th minutes is where the film really starts to pick up the pace, becoming the slick thriller I had hoped it would be, and certain plot developments honestly left me speechless.


I cannot deny that Storm Reid (Euphoria, When They See Us) is a great actor. I haven't seen the products that I listed here but she was wonderful in her scene in The Suicide Squad (She will also star in an episode of The Last of Us.). While initially I thought she was phoning her performance in, I realized very quickly that she was not. I was absolutely enamored by her performance, and she showed me that she can balance lightheartedness with some great character work. It won't win her an Oscar or nothing, but it truly was a good performance.


Everyone else's performance was honestly fine. Nothing special and nothing to write home about. With the exception of Joaquim de Almeida, everybody else feels stiff yet inspired. I don't really see a lot of warmth or care in these performances. But Joaquim de Almeida is a different story. From the first time we see his character, he oozes emotion and charisma as the Colombian gig worker hired to help solve the initial mystery.


As I previously stated, the pacing on this film is horrible. It takes way too long for anything of substance to happen and I got so frustrated with what I was seeing. There isn't a sense of realism here as there would be no way for an 18-year old girl to be able to do the things June does in the film without facing some legal repercussions. The film is able to suck me back in once the action picks up, and just in time too because I was ready to tap out.


So to conclude my thoughts, Missing takes too long to get where it truly wants to be, and that hurts it because when it does get there, it is real good. Thank you all for reading this shorter-than-usual review, and I will see you for the next one.

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