Review: Tech-twisted 'Missing' updates the thriller genre's operating system

One day you’re a teen, and the next, you’re deeply afraid of teens. Sunrise, sunset.

Sheepish awe at the tenacity of Gen-Z (or perhaps the next generation) isn’t the point of the new thriller “Missing,” though it might be the takeaway of anyone who can remember dial-up. A spiritual sequel to 2018 film “Searching,” this is another tech-focused take on a cinematic classic: the missing person mystery. The conceit in “Missing”: All the action in the film takes place via our omnipresent network of screens, be they FaceTime calls, Instagram stories or security camera footage.

You might call that a gimmick. To which I say, I will report that take as spam. For fans of a good old-fashioned potboiler, “Missing” is stirring. Here’s what you should know about the movie from writer-directors Nick Johnson and Will Merrick.

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'Missing' is genuinely gasp-worthy.

In “Missing,” teenage June (Storm Reid) is going through growing pains. Her dad has been gone since she was little, and now she’s a sullen young adult with no time for her protective mom, Grace (Nia Long), and especially not for her mom’s new boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung). When Grace and Kevin leave June at home for a trip to Colombia, June envisions friends, fun and as little of her mom’s friend Heather (Amy Landecker) looking in on her as possible.

But then Grace and Kevin don’t show up at the airport. And then their hotel says they left and didn’t take their bags. And then the twists come faster than a fiber internet connection, and the true-crime shows June binges on Netflix don’t seem nearly outrageous enough. She's plunged into a mystery that she takes into her own hands to solve, relying on only her (honestly pretty realistic) computer skills and the kindness of a South American gig worker named Javi (Joaquim de Almeida, stealing the movie).

On the Gasp-o-Meter ― the number of times that I audibly gasped in the theater watching a movie, patent pending ― “Missing” scored a solidly high four. Aliases! Trouble lurking out of the corner of a browser window! A plot-driving use of the iOS “live photos” function that will be studied in film school, if film schools exists in the geodesic domes of our post-climate apocalypse society! “Missing” is twisty as the day is long, and while that certainly doesn’t make it a grounded drama … would you be mad at a chicken for laying Grade-A omelet fuel? It’s just doing its job.

It’s exciting to watch a genre transform in front of your eyes.

Often, ink is spilled over the inventiveness of movies when they have a shot at award season gold. But while you’re unlikely to hear Jane Fonda or whoever read out “Missing” for best picture ― it's a lizard-brain melodrama, to be fair ― the movie is a prime example of genre films carving out creative space that could be absorbed into our cinematic language for years to come.

Take June's messy desktop and text inbox. Who knows what clues, or even just Easter eggs, can be hidden when those quotidian spaces are the new backdrop for a movie’s action?

Back to the terror of teens: For all its sensational thrills, there’s something undeniably resonant about how June and her friends are able to ply readily available digital tools toward their own investigative ends. I can’t stop thinking about how true to life it felt to watch these kids identify a low-rent web hosting service as an easy target for a password reset, in service of unlocking more clues. A teenager taking advantage of an older person’s lack of password security ― in an age of K-pop stans sabotaging political campaigns, this might as well be a documentary.

And visually, what could be annoying feels mostly exciting in “Missing.” Johnson and Merrick treat our terminally online world as a scenic shop. This isn’t the kind of “Zoom room cinema” that the pandemic wrought so many times; this is a movie that understands the many different mediums through which we reflect ourselves back into the world for consumption. (And, if the situation calls for it in the event of your mother’s possible kidnapping, for geolocation.)

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There’s even some depth in there.

When it’s not registering on the Gasp-o-Meter, “Missing” finds just enough nuance between its browser tabs.

Early in the film, June obsesses over a streaming show that dramatizes real-life tragedies. As the film’s plot unspools, she’s beset by the trappings of such shows ― the paparazzi flooding her lawn, the ancillary characters giving sit-down interviews to talk shows, the very public probes into her family’s darkest memories. It unnerves and frustrates her, and the audience is left to unpack their own viewing habits, without any giant neon arrows pointing them toward a moral.

There are threads about abuse and estrangement worth pulling on, too. But for my money, this heightened thriller’s surprisingly restrained take on the crime-entertainment industrial complex is most compelling. Gasp!

If you go: ‘Missing’

Grade: B+

Directors: Will Merrick and Nicholas D. Johnson

Starring: Storm Reid, Nia Long, Joaquim de Almeida, Amy Landecker

Rated: PG-13 for teen drinking, some strong violence, language, thematic material

Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes

Watch: In theaters on Jan. 20

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Review of Missing, screen-based thriller now in Austin theaters