Missing (2023)

After her mother goes missing, a young woman tries to find her from home, using tools available to her online.

You never really get into the action when it's digital.

When it's at a distance. When the search is via phone, and security footage, and Gmail (product placement hmm - it's a new age of opportunity out there) and what other real or made up services have you.

I do like the unorthodox approach - apart from somewhat artificial sounding bits of dialog it feels real, and all computer-related interfaces are legit. They don't miss any details with the chats, and notes, and logins, and all the little bits that lead the story onward; uncover new clues, but at the same time... it's just a shame everything's becoming so digital.

I may be a dying breed here, but I don't mind that. I'm not a fan. This is how we interact these days and I feel like it shouldn't be. We should be face to face. We should live for real, and express ourselves in the multitude of nuances that is real life; far away from keys and cameras that seem to convey but a tiny little portion of what it really is to be alive.

In a way they parody that here too.

Parody's maybe a wrong word, more so they show the downsides of it all. The stress of social media. Influencers, opinionators and mainstream news - not that the latter ever was digital. But everybody's their own detective now; everybody has an opinion.

Apart from that one digital downside the story's good though. Details are intricate. The progression's clever.

When June sneered at Veema for wondering if her mom had some secrets... Veema was right. She did have secrets. But it seems June also had that intuition in regard to her mom; in regard to what really matters. And as soon as the dad comes barging in she knows who's side he's really on too...

It's not all black and white after all. The scripting's good. I like Javier - and his somewhat less savvy but also appreciative approach to tech. It IS pretty cool you can reach across the world like this, at whim and will, however you'd wish to. If you ever run into this scenario yourself: go hire someone before they delete that camera footage.

But it's still... just not as engaging as I imagine it would've been if they filmed it for real. With the wide angles. With the crane or drone or copter shots. With the broad perspective of life. This is cagey.

But I do appreciate the new. It's an interesting way to make a movie, and the story's not all cliché. It feels like a worthwhile experiment.

I just hope it doesn't become the new standard, and that most keep going with the more traditional, more immersive, and by all manners all the more cinematic way.

 rated 3.5/5: not bad at all