Screenlife films weren’t something I really delved into until I saw the movie “Missing.” This mystery thriller takes a highly creative approach to filmmaking by telling the entire story (or nearly all of it) through digital screens. It feels especially fitting in today’s society, where so much of our interaction with the outside world happens through phones, TV, and the internet. “Missing” uses that familiarity and turns it into the foundation for a clever investigation.
Now that it’s streaming on Prime Video, I urge thriller fans to watch “Missing.” Made on a $7 million budget, the film became a major box office hit in 2023 thanks to its gripping format. It also serves as a standalone sequel to 2018’s “Searching,” set within the same shared universe. The story unfolds entirely through computer screens, smartphones, smartwatches, and even security cameras. Naturally, it plays out as a classic ticking-clock thriller, following a teenager racing against time to find her missing mother, but it also shows how much of our lives now exist online.
If you’re looking for a gripping movie to watch this weekend or want to venture into the world of screenlife, here’s why “Missing” should be on your Prime Video watchlist.
What is ‘Missing’ about?
“Missing” follows 18-year-old June Allen (Storm Reid), whose world is turned upside down when her mother, Grace (Nia Long), vanishes during a vacation in Colombia with her new boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung). Stuck in Los Angeles and unable to travel, June turns to technology to investigate the disappearance herself.
Using video calls, security footage, social media, online records, and hacked accounts, she pieces together clues from thousands of miles away while dealing with unhelpful authorities and growing panic. With the help of a local Colombian gig worker named Javier (Joaquim de Almeida), June races against time to track down what really happened before the trail goes cold. Every discovery only creates more questions.
‘Missing’ is like a layered digital puzzle
Because “Missing” is a screenlife film, it has to give us new ways to learn about the characters, and what better way to throw the viewer into the depths of their devices to see every photo, message, and memory. “Missing” begins by placing us inside a recorded video of a younger June with her father, before snapping to a montage of old digital files and documents being organized on a desktop. Immediately, we get a solid sense of this family’s history, until we see the face behind the girl: an older June, now planning a house party while her mom is away on vacation.
From her laptop’s camera, we see the tense and strained conversations between June and her mom, already setting up a fractured relationship that makes June’s desperate search for her mother days later even more emotional. “Missing” thrives because the viewer is also stuck in one place, inside the technology, making it easy to understand June’s desperation as she tries to find more clues, unable to simply fly to another country. Plus, because a teenager is at the centre of the search, the deep dives into Google, TikTok, password changes, and Venmo happen at lightning speed. It’s a seriously fast-paced film.
Considering Storm Reid spends almost the entire movie framed by a tight, flat webcam angle or a vertical smartphone lens, a lot of pressure fell on her to hold the viewer’s attention. And she did so with ease, perfectly capturing the frantic energy of a tech-literate kid under unimaginable stress. In some ways, it actually outpaces “Searching” in pure adrenaline, because instead of an out-of-his-depth father trying to find his daughter through various unfamiliar apps, “Missing” is centred around a teen who knows everything about the internet.
“Missing” actually marks the feature directorial debut of Will Merrick and Nick Johnson, who previously served as the film editors on “Searching.” With their background in editing, they treat the digital interface like a canvas, where a cursor hovering over a button, a hesitant message being typed, or a frantic page refresh communicates exactly what a character is feeling. It’s a seriously clever movie with some surprising twists, and although the ending veers into sensationalized B-movie thriller territory, it’s still a gripping ride that proves we need more screenlife films.
Stream "Missing" on Prime Video
