In 2018, director Anish Chaganti and co-writer Sev Ohanyan created the cute little thriller The Search, which comments on our current lifestyle and is online. In it, John Cho searches his digital junk for his missing daughter and deciphers the clues before his eyes. The entire film takes place on a computer screen and uses the way cameras infiltrate our daily lives, from FaceTime to CCTV.
The Search was a critical and commercial success, and its sequel, Missing, written and directed by Nick Johnson and Will Merrick from a story by Chaganti and Ohanian, hits theaters this week. This time around, her parents are missing, and as her daughter searches for her mother, she encounters a host of new horrors, technological triumphs, and true crimes.
Johnson and Merrick retain the format defined by Search, but the technological, cultural and media landscape has changed, including the gap in playing true crime content. The only time the camera detaches from the laptop screen is on a fake version of a Netflix crime series called Unfiction. TikTok detectives and Twitter cops have also multiplied, conducting chair analyzes on every missing person case.
If you've ever watched Seeking, you probably thought the answer would be in front of moviegoers, but Lost needs some really wild and crazy twists and turns to hit the mark. June (Storm Reid), an 18-year-old college freshman, wants to wreak havoc on her friends while her mother Grace (Nia Long) is vacationing in Colombia with her new boyfriend Kevin (Ken Leung). But when a drunken June arrives in Los Angeles to pick her up a week later, Grace and Kevin are not there.
Relying on his impressive Google skills as Gen Z, June begins searching for his missing mother by browsing live travel cameras and bank statements, and hiring TaskRabbit-like assistant Javi (Joaquim de Almeida). do homework with your feet. Colombia. June is smart, resourceful and fearless, and the way she cracks passwords and navigates the information maze will make anyone wonder how much data they should keep track of in their Google account. Is it better to leave a mark? It depends on what you are doing.
The breathtaking Lost interweaves nearly two hours of touching stories at breakneck speed. And while it's certainly entertaining, it also takes on dark undertones as it deals with intimate partner pain, loss, and abuse in a very realistic way, backed up by exciting headline news and, yes, a hilariously gripping true crime series. tiktoks.
That's what makes movies like "The Search" and "Missing" so irresistible. Not only are these high-concept thrillers with melodramatic acting (Reed is a great person, but it's doubtful he'll get an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Cho), but they also feel real at their weirdest moments. .
We live most of our reality online, unknowingly passing on artifacts of our life experiences as we tap and swipe. But "Buscando" and "Perdidos" confirm that although the images, videos, breadcrumbs of humanity are reflected in zeros and ones, nothing is like the original, for better or worse.
Walsh is a film critic for the Tribune News Service.
"He's Lost"
Rating: PG-13 for intense violence, profanity, underage drinking, and feature material.
When: open on Fridays
Where: wide open
Duration: 1 hour 51 minutes
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