movie review disappeared 2012

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All the shtuff that's fit for me to print, viff 2012 review: the disappeared.

The Disappeared is a story about six men in two boats in the middle of nowhere in the Atlantic and nothing else. To your surprise, it succeeds in being entertaining.

The film begins with the six men in two boats just waking up. They range from a young twentysomething like Little Dickie to an older man like Captain Gerald. They get up and they row along to shore together. It isn’t until later we learn that the men are in lifeboats having survived a shipwreck from their fishing boat hundreds of miles from shore. In fact one is badly injured in the arm. All six stick together and row together even tying a rope to each other’s boats. They survive with little food and whatever to drink. They have to rely on fishing and hunting skills for any extra food. Sometimes the weather is unpredictable and even dangerous. Any chances of hope are either missed, a mirage or less hopeful than expected.

Things change as the wounded man becomes sicker and then dies. They first leave him in the boat with the two others but eventually becomes just one boat with the five. There are moments of closeness between some but moments of friction too even as Merv becomes downright angry and has a miserable attitude. Eventually all come to terms with what has happened and what may be. They’re still willing to chance it back to coast but they all put their last thoughts in writings in a bottle. They still continue rowing despite all hope waning. The ending ends as it does with the men rowing and still missing. It leaves imagery unclear exactly what happened to the five men. I guess that was the point of the film: for the audience to draw their own conclusion.

I have to commend the filmmakers for succeeding in making an entertaining story taking place between one or two boats, six men and nothing else but the vast ocean. The story had a lot of elements in it: humor, tragedy, drama, tense moments, moments of hope, moments that define the human spirit, sea shanties of both fun and pain, basically a lot with what they present.  It was not an easy task to do, especially with it being 86 minutes in length, but it does.

I will have to admit that while watching it, I questioned the circumstances with modern thinking. Like would any of them have some sort of cellphone communication with help? Also since they’re in lifeboats, wouldn’t there be coast guard helicopters circling the ocean area looking for survivors? Yes, thoughts like those did cross my mind. Despite my modern thinking, I will admit it didn’t affect my feelings of how well played out the film was. I guess the point of the film was about human emotions during times of crises.

I have to commend writer/director Shandi Mitchell for succeeding in making a watchable entertaining film with such limits. Well done, especially since this is her first feature-length film: Yes, her! It’s also great to see a female director succeed in conveying the thoughts and emotions of Nova Scotia men on screen. She was as good at having Nova Scotia machismo down to a tee as she was at giving the male characters their own deep sensitive feelings. Great job. Also good were the acting efforts of all six men. It’s hard to say if there was one actor that stood out from the six. None of them looked like they were trying to steal the show, even though the most well-known was Billy Campbell. All of them did a very good effort in creating dimension and including character and emotion in their roles from the beginning to the end. The characters and their feelings could say a lot about us as they do about the six men. Another set of efforts worth commending.

I went to see The Disappeared on the second-last day of the VIFF. I was hoping to see a Canadian live-action feature during the festival and hadn’t yet. I’ve seen many Canadian documentaries and shorts programs but no live-action feature. This caught my attention in the VIFF programme not just for that reason but also because it was listed being from Nova Scotia. Great to see some of the smaller provinces making a contribution to Canada’s film industry this year and The Disappeared is an excellent work. It was filmed off the coast of Lunenberg and filed with financial assistance from Film Nova Scotia, TeleFilm Canada and The Movie Network/MovieCentral. It is now making its way in the Canadian film festival circuit. How much further it goes is yet to be determined.

The Disappeared accomplishes a lot with what little it has. It brings six characters in the same local into a story that’s entertaining and thought provoking. Excellent effort from all those involved.

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I hate the ending of the Disappeared

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The Disappeared (2012)

Directed by shandi mitchell.

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The Disappeared is a Canadian drama film written and directed by author and filmmaker Shandi Mitchell. A story of survival and self-discovery for six men lost at sea in the North Atlantic, it stars Billy Campbell, Shawn Doyle, Brian Downey, Gary Levert, Ryan Doucette, and Neil Matheson.

The film premiered at the Atlantic Film Festival September 14, 2012.

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The Disappeared

• The story of six men lost at sea in the North Atlantic.
• Six members of a North Atlantic fishing crew, whose boat has just sunk while out on a fishing trip, have managed to take refuge in two of the lifeboats, which they have tied together in their vow to stay together as they try to make their way back to safety. They have also managed to salvage many supplies, including some food and water, which falls to regimented Gib to ration according to Captain Gerald's timetable. With only a compass in hand and no sight of either land or other marine vessels, they can only guess where they are, which Gerald does, believing rightly or wrongly that at the speed and frequency they are rowing, they should hit land in six or seven days barring any unforeseen circumstances. For good or bad, Merv and "Young" Dickie further have each other emotionally as father and son, the devout Christian dad who is tough on his naive son, for who this trip is his first in his want to be a fishing boat captain his own right in the future. Despite their precarious situation, the mood among the six is relatively light. That mood is also despite the serious gash in the right arm of Mannie, the first mate, that wound which has the strong possibility of getting infected unless he gets some immediate professional medical attention. As their situation becomes more dire, the question becomes whether their solidarity will hold strong, especially with outspoken Pete among the group. — Huggo
• The Disappeared is a visually stunning story set on the vast panorama of the Atlantic Ocean. The film centers on six men lost at sea in two dories. With no rescue in sight, they make the difficult decision to row for shorea journey of over two hundred miles. With scant supplies diminishing, they are tested beyond human endurance as their captain leads them through the fickle wind, rain, fog and darkness. Dwarfed in this unforgiving realm between sea and sky, they fight to hold on as their strength dwindles and their will shatters. Desperation overtakes hope as the men are swallowed by their aloneness, even as they are bound together by the wooden boats that hold them. To find their way home, they must first discover the courage and compassion it takes to live and the men they truly are.

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Missing Reviews Are Here, See What Critics Are Saying About The Standalone Sequel To Searching

Embrace the screen life.

When the mystery thriller Searching came out in 2018, it was a hit with audiences for its unique visual presentation — using computer screens and smartphones — and mysterious plot. Five years later, Missing is set to hit theaters, as a standalone sequel that stars The Last of Us cast member Storm Reid (also known for shouting F-bombs at Idris Elba in The Suicide Squad ). Reid plays June Allen, who turns to technology in search of her mother Grace (Nia Long) after she goes missing while on vacation in Columbia. The reviews are in, so let’s see what critics are saying ahead of Missing ’s release to theaters January 20.

John Cho made history in Searching as the first Asian-American to headline a thriller — a title he wasn’t overly excited about — starring as a father searching for his 16-year-old daughter. Missing flips that premise, with the parent being the party of unknown whereabouts in the sequel. Let’s see what the critics think, starting with CinemaBlend’s review of Missing . Eric Eisenberg says if you can suspend your belief enough to accept certain aspects of screenlife cinema, you’ll be rewarded with an anthology sequel even better than the original. He rates it 3.5 stars out of 5, saying: 

Missing can’t be said to particularly advance screenlife cinema, but it is further proof of the impressive viability for storytelling in the medium – and the story that unfolds is engaging, exciting, and well-told. It’s a fun and twisty mystery, and the film makes a strong argument for there to be more chapters made in this budding anthology series.

Lovia Gyarkye of THR calls the film “chilling,” noting that it doesn’t just focus on the existence of different technological advances, but also speculates on their effects on society, namely the ease with which we voluntarily submit to surveillance. The critic says: 

Missing succeeds at maintaining a propulsive, nail-biting atmosphere and overcoming the boredom of its conventional narrative beats by treating each tool — Gmail accounts, iPhone photos and company websites — as a deeply layered puzzle, one that gathers and offers more information than most people realize. For those already attuned to the tendrils of our increasingly surveilled world, Missing, like an episode of Black Mirror, will mostly confirm suspicions about the ease of tracing even the most stubbornly opaque online lives. For everyone else, it’ll be a chilling wake-up call.

Jeremy Mathai of SlashFilm rates Missing a 7 out of 10, saying the sequel leans hard on the aspects of what worked for Searching , but a smart script and engaging plot add up to a bold and audacious thriller that this critic says will leave you breathless. According to the review:  

Whatever else one may say about it, Missing is a rip-roaring crowd-pleaser of a film that needs to be experienced in theaters with a boisterous crowd. If its reach exceeds its own grasp at points, at least it's in service of an original, ambitious, and utterly distinct vision that could very well turn into the most unique original franchise this side of Rian Johnson's Benoit Blanc murder mysteries. These days, that can't help but feel like a breath of fresh air.

Robert Abele of The Wrap says the movie proves that the digital world is still fertile ground for exciting storytelling, as Missing replaces the Facebook and YouTube searches from Searching and adds tools like Google streetviews, mobile tracking and Taskrabbit outsourcing. Even if it does get somewhat preposterous in its twists, it’s still thrilling, the critic argues: 

And yet a handful of this movie’s nobody-is-who-they-seem mysteries are still believably just out of June’s reach until they can be revealed for both maximum suspense and, occasionally, heightened ridiculousness (especially its last twist and nutty climax). But who cares about the Harlan Coben–like preposterousness of the story, really, when the genre feels like it’s getting a juicy system update thanks to the world of livestreams, smartwatches, Mac sticky notes, VPNs and Ring cams?

Todd Gilchrist of Variety also warns against audiences becoming overly concerned with how we’re viewing information at any given time. The critic points out that there’s no real reason this world needs to be set exclusively in screens, and the directors even cut to exterior angles when it suits their needs. According to this review:  

Missing ultimately proves so beholden to its central technological premise that audiences who take it at face value may become distracted by questioning how they’re seeing certain information, and from whose perspective, instead of focusing on a sequence of events that’s increasingly preposterous but nevertheless should prove gripping — at least as long as those who watch it don’t do as much digging as June does.

If you’re intrigued by the concept and what the critics have to say about Missing , you’ll be able to catch this movie on the big screen starting Friday, January 20. And if you want to start planning your next night out to the theater, take a look at our 2023 Movie Release Schedule to see what’s coming soon. 

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Heidi Venable is a Content Producer for CinemaBlend, a mom of two and a hard-core '90s kid. She started freelancing for CinemaBlend in 2020 and officially came on board in 2021. Her job entails writing news stories and TV reactions from some of her favorite prime-time shows like Grey's Anatomy and The Bachelor. She graduated from Louisiana Tech University with a degree in Journalism and worked in the newspaper industry for almost two decades in multiple roles including Sports Editor, Page Designer and Online Editor. Unprovoked, will quote Friends in any situation. Thrives on New Orleans Saints football, The West Wing and taco trucks.

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Movie Review

Missing Child Seems Found, but His Family Is at a Loss

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

• July 12, 2012

Like its smirking antihero and chief narrator, the serial con artist Frédéric Bourdin, “The Imposter” is slippery, manipulative, unstable and smoothly confounding. It’s also one of the most entertaining documentaries to appear since “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” a film similarly obsessed with role playing and deception.

Cleverly deflecting our dislike of Mr. Bourdin’s smug narcissism and brazen amorality, the British director Bart Layton presents this bizarre true-crime narrative from multiple viewpoints. The resulting collage of interviews, re-enactments and home-video footage proves the perfect medium for the twisty story of Nicholas Barclay, a Texas teenager who disappeared in 1994.

When, three years and some months later, a carefully camouflaged Mr. Bourdin surfaced in Spain, claiming to be the missing boy and armed with horrific details of torture and abuse, no one should have believed him. How could a 23-year-old, raven-haired French-Algerian pass himself off as a 16-year-old blond, blue-eyed American?

That question bleats insistently throughout this mind-boggling relay of official incompetence, familial self-deception and ingenious duplicity. But Mr. Layton is less concerned with trapping the truth than in laying out its many disguises: invariably cocooned in a selection of hoodies, hats and scarves, Mr. Bourdin (and his stand-in for re-enactments, Adam O’Brian) slinks through the film like a mutating virus. Everyone is contaminated, from Child Protective Services and the United States Embassy in Madrid to the American news media and the F.B.I. And, not least, Nicholas’s traumatized family.

“I washed her brain,” Mr. Bourdin boasts of his initial meeting with Nicholas’s older sister, Carey Gibson, whose face in interviews bears the look of a woman who expected a puppy for Christmas and unwrapped a viper.

The rest of Nicholas’s family appears equally sideswiped, leaving us to wonder how long the ruse would have continued had not an unlikely hero hustled forward in the folksy form of Charlie Parker, a private investigator and inveterate clue sniffer. Round of belly and suspicious of mind, Mr. Parker pounces on the story, wrestles it to the ground and makes off with it to a destination that calls into question almost everything we have just seen.

Unrepentant to the end, Mr. Bourdin presides over this tragedy with repulsive self-regard. But his director, working with the editor Andrew Hulme, refuses to cede control of the film’s tone. Using unexpected flares of humor — when a telephone rings in a police station, it’s answered by a delightful montage of famous small-screen detectives — and defiantly jaunty rhythms, Mr. Layton lightens the mood without making light of the crime. His subject does that all by himself.

“The Imposter” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Some language, but mostly lies, damned lies and no statistics whatsoever.

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When her mother goes 'Missing,' a Gen-Z teen takes up a tense search on screens

Linda Holmes

June (Storm Reid) is on the case when her mother disappears during a vacation with her boyfriend. Temma Hankin/Sony Pictures hide caption

June (Storm Reid) is on the case when her mother disappears during a vacation with her boyfriend.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that repetition often destroys elegance.

Compare the elegance of Speed (if this bus slows down, it will blow up) with the clumsy Speed 2: Cruise Control (this cruise ship is going to very slowly run into a beach). The elegance of The Fast and the Furious (street racing is fun!) with Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson ending up in space. The elegance of Die Hard (one cop tries to rescue a building full of hostages) with ... well, any other Die Hard movie.

The 2014 horror film Unfriended , an early entry in the "screenlife" category in which everything plays out on computer screens, is formally elegant — simple, economical and effective. Mostly, you are just watching a group video call, with periodic visits to other places like Facebook or sketchy, unpleasantly believable forums where links seem like they could lead anywhere. And that video call, it turns out, is haunted, and will gradually knock off everybody on it. That's the story; that's the format. Screenlife has ties not just to "found-footage" movies (also formally elegant: The Blair Witch Project ), but to epistolary novels, too. In all these forms, the traditional telling of a story is replaced by the opportunity for the viewer/reader to examine the evidence that the story happened.

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John cho and aneesh chaganty on 'searching'.

One of the producers of Unfriended was Timur Bekmambetov, who was also a producer of not only its follow-up Unfriended: Dark Web , but also the 2018 screenlife thriller Searching . Searching was directed by Aneesh Chaganty and stars John Cho as a father stumbling through the digital life of his teenage daughter trying to solve the mystery of her disappearance. And now, Bekmambetov is a producer of Missing , which is a flashier, snazzier, and — yes — less formally elegant project written and directed by Nick Johnson and Will Merrick, who were editors on Searching .

Missing stars Storm Reid as June, a bright and restless young woman whose mother, Grace (Nia Long), vanishes during a vacation to Colombia with her boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung). In an inversion of Searching 's tense portrayal of a father who feels helpless and adrift in the complexities of his daughter's highly connected life, Missing makes June a Gen-Z'er who knows how to get around adults who reuse their passwords, don't secure their devices, and thus leave themselves open to all manner of snooping. This is her environment; she is at home here on her screens.

It's a good thing June feels at ease with her tech, because 10 years after Unfriended , her online life has grown far more complicated than that haunted video call. She has a Ring doorbell, she has voice-activated everything, she can chat with people around the world who are not in front of their computers, she inhabits a world full of live webcams, and home security systems have boomed. Her social media life isn't about a Facebook page; it's about bits and bobs scattered all over. She's also not John Cho's David from Searching , who slowly explores one platform at a time, painstakingly dragging individual snippets of information out of the dark. June hops from window to window like a plate-spinner; following her "screenlife" investigation of her mother's disappearance is dizzying. It is her expectation that information she needs can be found somewhere, from her laptop. The editing has been accelerated and complicated by self-consciously inventive visual transitions, and regrettably, a lot of the simplicity has been lost.

Movie Reviews

The internet of spooky things is alive in 'unfriended'.

There is something bracingly confident, in retrospect, about Unfriended , which plays out the boring acts of typing and scrolling in real time, the frustrations of trying over and over to click on things that cannot be clicked on. (Because it's got a virus and that virus is ... a ghost.) In classic horror style, what is unseen in that film is often more frightening than what is seen, and what is seen is limited by the format. While it's a thriller rather than a horror film, Searching , too, moves deliberately, making limited and effective use of hidden cameras, streaming, and other avenues that allow a found-footage style (more similar to Paranormal Activity or The Blair Witch Project ) to take over from a pure screenlife style.

Much of Missing , however, particularly late in its story, is more a found-footage film than a screenlife film. It doesn't rely on messages, chats, forums, or that dance of typing and scrolling — it shows you a regular scene, but from the perspective of a camera that exists inside the story.

Missing is not a bad film; it's a good film. It's smart, Reid is terrific, the thriller elements are gripping, the twists are surprising, and some of the moments in which June outsmarts people who are trying to cut her off from information she needs are highly satisfying. At the same time, it feels, in a way that's a bit deflating, like a regression to the mean, where the repetition of this format across films (with perhaps greater and greater box-office expectations) makes them less and less formally interesting.

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June's active, inventive exploration of online information is also, perhaps, part of the evolution of a concept that travels from the horror realm to the thriller realm, with the shift in intensity that suggests. Maybe if a thriller is about what frightens you, a horror film is about what frightens you most — that's an oversimplification and certainly not the genre definition, but it captures something about the difference between the adrenaline of thrillers and the visceral wallop of horror.

What frightens many of us most is not peril itself, but the growing sense of helplessness and hopelessness that horror does so well. What June has at her disposal is a multiplicity of tools, of new avenues to explore. Missing is a study of the ways in which the internet is full of a hundred ways to solve a problem; it's a story about bending these tools to your will. Unfriended was about the anonymous message, the blank page, the blinking cursor, the grayed-out option, the spinning ball, the baffling intrusion — online life when it doesn't work.

But it's hard not to wonder what a thriller would look like that had more faith in this format, that didn't feel so beholden to found-footage films. It's another truth universally acknowledged that limitations often spur creativity; Missing without the benefit of quite so many accessible cameras for June to peek through would be an adventure all its own.

“ Missing ” isn’t exactly a sequel to “ Searching ,” but rather another installment in what feels like a burgeoning Searching Cinematic Universe. It features a brief reference to the mystery within the 2018 hit film during a breathless, early montage, part of an amalgamation of sights and sounds that puts us on edge from the very start.

While “Searching” was about a father looking for his daughter entirely within the confines of screens – laptops, cell phones, surveillance footage – “Missing” finds a daughter looking for her mother through the same narrative structure. Catching lightning in a bottle twice is nearly impossible, though, and “Missing” lacks the novelty of its thrillingly clever predecessor. “Searching” may have sounded like a gimmick, but it worked because it was relatable within its unnerving premise. As John Cho ’s character desperately seeks clues to his daughter’s whereabouts by investigating her online activities, we tell ourselves in the audience that we’d have the same presence of mind to follow those logical steps. Cho was tremendous in the role, which featured his face in close up nearly the entire time. There was nowhere to hide, and he revealed every glimmer of fear and hope with great nuance.

The new film from the writing/directing duo of Nick Johnson and Will Merrick , based on a story by the original “Searching” team of Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian , takes the exact same approach. It pulls off the impressive narrative highwire act but includes a couple twists too many, eventually depleting it of much of the realism that makes it so gripping for so long. But “Missing” is also zippier in a lot of ways, because the character who’s front and center is an 18-year-old high school senior who’s interacted with this kind of technology her whole life, rather than a middle-aged dad who’s figuring it out as he goes along.

Storm Reid ’s June is a master multitasker, a wizard of the World Wide Web. It’s like watching Lydia Tár conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, only with FaceTime and Venmo and Spotify. Even before her widowed mom, Grace (a lovely Nia Long ), takes off on a Colombian vacation with her new boyfriend, Kevin ( Ken Leung ), we learn so much about the way June spends her days simply by watching her skip between tabs and tap away at her keyboard. She frequently leaves on the camera on her computer, allowing us a peek inside her bedroom and the way she interacts with people IRL. Reid has a likeable, engaging screen presence, and she establishes quickly that June is both smart and a smart-ass.

But once Grace and Kevin fail to show up at LAX as scheduled – which we also see because June has set up her cell phone to capture the moment she greets them at baggage claim – her instincts and years of experience online really kick into gear. We feel her increasing terror as she struggles to communicate with the front desk clerk at a Cartagena hotel, who only speaks Spanish. But she’s such a resourceful problem solver, she realizes she can navigate this city remotely with Google maps and the help of a Taskrabbit-style errand runner for hire named Javi (Joaquim de Almeida, who brings a welcome warmth and humor to this suspenseful scenario).

With each new password she cracks, website she visits and email she reads, June raises more questions than she answers, and “Missing” makes us question these characters again and again. Guessing what’s really going on here is a lot of fun, but as Grace’s disappearance becomes national news, it’s clear Johnson and Merrick have something to say about the ghoulish nature of glomming onto tragedy. One major way “Missing” has evolved from “Searching” is the way it features podcasters and TikTokers analyzing every little detail of the case, forming ill-founded opinions and spreading conspiracy theories for their own fame and gain. It’s at once amusing and dismaying. The directors also effectively employ Ring security video, which wasn’t as prevalent when the first film came out, as a source of tension; we see just enough to know there’s more we can’t see.

But if the delightfully nutty “ M3GAN ” was a cautionary tale about the perils of relying too heavily on technology, “Missing” ends up being a celebration of its possibilities. It’s also a good reminder that we should all be using passwords that don’t include our childhood dogs’ names and kids’ birthdays.

Now playing in theaters. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Storm Reid as June Allen
• Joaquim De Almeida as Javier
• Ken Leung as Kevin Lin
• Amy Landecker as
• Daniel Henney as Agent Elijah Park
• Nia Long as Grace Allen
• Megan Suri as Veena
• Tim Griffin as James Allen
• Thomas Barbusca as Cody

Writer (story by)

• Aneesh Chaganty
• Sev Ohanian
• Arielle Zakowski
• Austin Keeling
• Julian Scherle
• Nicholas D. Johnson
• Will Merrick

Cinematographer

• Steven Holleran

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Review: ‘Missing’ turns up more terrors in tech and true crime

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In 2018, director Aneesh Chaganty and co-writer Sev Ohanian turned in a nifty little thriller, “Searching , ” that comments on the way we live now, which is to say, online. In it, John Cho searches for his missing daughter through her digital detritus, parsing clues in plain sight. The entirety of the film took place on a computer screen, making use of the way cameras permeate our everyday existence, from FaceTime to surveillance video.

“Searching” was a critical and commercial success, and a follow-up, “Missing” — written and directed by Nick Johnson and Will Merrick, with a story by Chaganty and Ohanian — hits theaters this week. This time, it’s a parent that’s gone missing, and as the daughter searches for her mother, she turns up a whole host of new terrors and triumphs of tech and true crime.

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The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the CDC and local health officials .

Johnson and Merrick use the format set by “Searching,” but the technological, cultural and media landscape has evolved, including the fire hose of streaming true crime content. The only time the camera is ever liberated from the laptop screen is during fake-out re-creations from a Netflix true crime series called “Unfiction.” There’s also the proliferation of TikTok detectives and Twitter police performing armchair analysis on every missing person case.

If you’ve seen “Searching,” you’ll probably have an inkling that the answer will be planted in front of filmgoers, but “Missing” takes some absolutely wild and crazy twists and turns in arriving at its destination. College-bound June ( Storm Reid ), 18, just wants to rage with her friends while her mom, Grace ( Nia Long ), is on vacation in Colombia with her new boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung). But when a hungover June rolls into LAX to pick them up a week later, Grace and Kevin are no-shows.

Relying on her impressive Google skills, innate to a digitally native member of Gen Z, June starts searching for her missing mom, combing through tourist live cams, bank statements and hiring a TaskRabbit-type helper, Javi (Joaquim de Almeida), to do footwork in Colombia. June is smart, resourceful and bold, and the way she cracks passwords and navigates the maze of information will make anyone think deeply about how much data tracking one should leave toggled on in their Google account. Is it better to leave a trace? Depends on what you’re doing.

The suspenseful “Missing” plows through nearly two hours of shocking plot twists at a breakneck pace. And while it’s entertaining to be sure, it also takes on a somber tone as it reckons with grief, loss and intimate partner violence in a way that’s very real, backed up by headlines ripped from the news, and yes, those true crime series and TikToks that are so very compelling.

That’s what makes movies like “Searching” and “Missing” so captivating. They’re not only high-concept thrillers featuring melodramatic acting (Reid is a likable presence, but it’s doubtful she’ll snag an Independent Spirit Award nomination the way Cho did) but they also feel authentic to the way we live, even in the outlandish moments.

We experience so much of our reality online, unknowingly scattering artifacts of our lived experience as we click and swipe. But “Searching” and “Missing” reiterate that despite the pictures, videos, the bread crumbs of humanity reflected in zeroes and ones, there’s nothing like the real thing, for better, or for worse.

Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

Rated: PG-13, for some strong violence, language, teen drinking and thematic material Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes Playing: Starts Jan. 20 in general release

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Is a Movie About Electing a Pope Allowed to Be This Entertaining?

Conclave begins with the image of a cardinal tensely making his way along a Roman highway late at night, his crimson biretta cap clasped tightly in his hand. It’s a stark, almost funny image, the elegant robes of this high priest trudging through a bleak, contemporary urban setting. The characters of Conclave won’t spend much time in the world at large — this is one of the few times we will see one outside in Edward Berger’s film — but the dissonance will continue to resonate. These are men carrying out what they view as an ancient function: electing a new Pope, now that the old one has died. They diligently shut out the modern world, but it’s still there, outside the windows and beyond the doors, constantly felt in everything they do.

At the center of the squall is Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), the dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to run the conclave, as cardinals from around the world gather inside the hallowed sanctuary of the Sistine Chapel to cast ballots for a new pontiff. It’s a perfect role for Fiennes, who can do both placidity and intensity — sometimes, somehow, all at once. Thomas exudes gentleness and tolerance. He’s a deeply conflicted man who admits, in an initial address to the conclave, that he values doubt and abhors certainty — and yet, as the picture proceeds, he becomes more obsessed with controlling the outcome.

Berger’s film is adapted, quite faithfully, from Robert Harris’s 2016 novel, and it combines the pulp velocity of a great airport read with the gravitas of high drama. It solemnly depicts the ornate rituals around the death of the Pope — the ribbons placed across his door and fastened with melted red wax, the seals clipped off his rings, the constant prayers and the secretive mutterings — with only a slight nod to the sheer pointlessness of it all. It means something to these men, and that’s enough. Same, too, with the lugubrious dance of the conclave itself, with its round after round of balloting and tallying and quiet reflecting.

Many film critics who participate in year-end awards voting will find themselves nodding with recognition during Conclave at how allegiances shift between ballots in response to who’s ahead, who’s likely to win, and whose support seems to be crumbling. I have no idea how accurate this is to the way cardinals actually vote, but both the book and the movie have the confident ring of truth, or at least truthiness. And it’s interesting to learn that the Very Serious Men who elect popes scheme as effectively as the New York Film Critics Circle did when it voted (well-deserving) underdog Rachel Weisz best actress in 2012 to prevent front-runners Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence from getting the prize instead; or when the warring camps of Days of Heaven and Deer Hunter supporters at the National Society of Film Critics in 1978 famously fought each other to a standstill and allowed Bertrand Blier’s Get Out Your Handkerchiefs to sneak in and win Best Picture that year.

Where was I? Oh, right, Conclave . Amid such stately ceremony, Berger finds ways to insert gradually escalating tumult and cattiness. Though he tries to be fair and balanced, Thomas is allied with Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci), a progressive candidate who wants to continue the Church’s liberalization and engagement with the world. Opposing them is Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), a reactionary Italian who thinks the Church has been on the wrong track ever since it got rid of the Latin Mass in the 1960s. But there are other candidates as well — chiefly, Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow), a supreme politician who, for all his outward soft-spoken humility, clearly has great ambitions. And then there’s Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), a charismatic cardinal from Nigeria who could become the first Black pope.

None of these people actively campaign for the papacy. Save maybe for the flamboyant Tedesco (a not very big role that Castellitto turns into a full, rollicking meal), they’re all lowered eyebrows and hushed whispers and collegial exchanges, soberly prostrating themselves before God and seeking His guidance…all the while quietly and viciously stabbing each other in the back. Such muted machinations present a wonderful showcase for these actors, as well as Isabella Rossellini, as a head nun who becomes more central to the plot, and the relatively unknown Mexican actor Carlos Diehz, as a heretofore unknown cardinal named Vincent Benitez. Secretly named the Archbishop of Kabul, Benitez shows up unannounced on the day of the conclave and sends what promised to be a predictable gathering into the first of its many entertaining tailspins.

Despite the fact that they’ve all been cocooned deep inside the Vatican, with the doors barred, the priests of Conclave are all quite aware of how everything they do will have real-world repercussions, particularly in the way the Church is perceived. That fragile isolation isn’t just a psychological element. We sense throughout that the outside world is undergoing turmoil of which these men are mostly unaware — though we suspect they soon will be, both metaphorically and physically. Berger expertly milks that anticipation, then nails several artfully heated and lively climaxes. My audience at the Telluride Film Festival began roaring with delight and surprise, and I’ve heard similar reports out of Toronto screenings as well. So, well, don’t be surprised if this sinfully entertaining movie wins a few awards.

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