Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Jul 15, 2023 19:21:02 GMT -5
Missing(5/25/2023)  The “Screenlife” genre, movies that predominantly play out like computer screen captures, are in a strange place where the still seem like fads without much of a future and yet we still seem to get a few each year. The most recent example is the film Missing, which is billed as a spiritual sequel to the 2018 film Searching even though the films have different directors, writers, and actors (though the people behind Searching do have “story by” credits here). The film follows an eighteen year old girl in what appears to be the summer before college as she reacts to her single mother disappearing while on vacation in Colombia with her latest suitor. Most of the movie follows her online interactions as she tries to gather information about what happened to her. These movies generally need to indulge in some contrivances in order to stick to the format for the whole story and this one is no exception but there’s a certain admirable ingenuity to the strategies the writers find to make that happen more often than not. I really don’t know how many more of these kinds of movie I’m going to want to see, it feels like kind of a silly limitation to go for and I’m not sure this one is offering too much more than previous entrants in the genre did in terms of insights into modern communication, but set aside the gimmick and there is a fun little loopy mystery to be found at the movie’s center and I mostly enjoyed my time with it. *** out of Five |
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Jul 16, 2023 12:55:05 GMT -5
Searching was a really nice surprise of a movie a number of years ago, but the prospect of trying to replicate that success with another movie in that style actually was questionable to me, because Searching felt so unique and tightly-constructed, that I just wasn't sure if they could do it again and have the same results. Well, Missing is here to prove me wrong, because this is another engaging film and equally effective use of the screen format. It manages to still feel fresh and not like we're just retreading Searching. Just like how that film managed to create a strong emotional core to build its story around with John Cho and his daughter, Missing does the same with the mother/daughter relationship between Nia Long's and Storm Reid's characters. Reid, in particular, sells her character's anxiety, fear and confusion very well, so that by the time we get to the conclusion, we absolutely feel the emotion and catharsis of it all. That's also owed to the filmmaking, which makes this potentially confining style very cinematic and thrilling, and it feels just as tightly-honed on that level as Searching did. That also goes hand-in-hand with how solidly-constructed Missing is on a story level, too. The script pretty cleverly sets certain things up early on that it'll later deliver on in ways that are surprising, yet satisfying. And even though there are times when it feels like things run the risk of becoming too outlandish, the movie always knows when to reel it back in to believability. I really gotta give it up for the writers of these films. Missing is one of the nicest surprises of the year so far, and apart from being impressive on a stylistic level, is just a really well-constructed thriller to boot.
***/****
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