2011 Megan is Missing

• Directed by: Michael Goi
• Written by: Michael Goi
• Stars: Amber Perkins, Rachel Quinn, Dean Waite
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes
• Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKnI8lbEdus

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a movie entirely on webcam, video, phone camera, and so forth, presented in found footage format. Two “teenage” girls are the main characters, who fall for an Internet predator. It’s drawn out and talky for a long time before the missing part happens. It does finally dial up the horrifying, and hard to watch, up to eleven, but it takes quite a while to get there. It’s bleak and cautionary.

Spoilery Synopsis

Amy and Megan come on talking about being her new camera. We’re told onscreen that in 2007, 14 year old Megan went missing, and three weeks later, Amy also vanished. Credits roll.

The two girls talk about losing their virginity soon and drugs as well. We soon see Megan’s mom smashing her X-Box in the other room. Amy, on the other hand, has a nice home life. Amy’s a year younger than the other girls, so the others consider her something of a nerd.

On Saturday, everyone goes out to a house party. Amy’s only invited because Megan insisted on it, but she doesn’t really fit in. It’s pretty wild for a teenage party, since everyone is too young to really know how to party. It doesn’t end well for Amy, who pukes on some other girls.

The next day, the girls talk about blowjobs; Megan did her first one at age ten, but Amy’s still afraid to try. She tells the story, and it’s anything but romantic. The conversation is interrupted by Meg’s overbearing mother, which prompts her into saying she hates it there and would like to just leave.

It’s Amy’s 14th birthday, and she gets a new video camera. She interviews Megan about being sexually assaulted by her stepfather. Amy, on the other hand, talks about her favorite stuffed animals.

Megan hears about a new guy in town, Josh, who’s a skateboarder. He likes what he sees, but his “camera is broken” so she can’t see him. He invites her to a party tonight, and she’s clearly interested. He doesn’t show up.

She calls Josh, and he swears he was there. He describes what she was wearing, so he was there, but she never saw him. They flirt and make up on their one-sided video call. Later, she calls him again and introduces Amy. Amy leaves, and Megan goes to meet him behind the diner.

The next day, Amy starts calling Megan’s friends; she didn’t come home last night. She eventually calls Josh, who says she never showed up last night.

A couple days later, Megan’s disappearance makes the news. Amy continues to record her video diary; the newspeople all seem to think Megan ran away, but Amy doesn’t believe that. We see security footage of a man meeting Megan and leading her away.

Amy continues to talk to “Josh” on the webcam, and he denies that the “old guy” in the video footage was him. He’s a little mean to her, and he seems to understand her pretty well. She goes to the police and tells them everything. The other girls blame Amy for all this, for no particular reason.

Josh threatens Amy to shut up to the police and says he’s watching her. We do see a mysterious figure behind Amy in some of her videos.

A few months later, torture porn photos of Megan show up on a fetish site. She’s not looking like she’s having a good time.

Amy goes missing as well, and the news people speculate that they may have run off together. They do, however, find Amy’s video camera in the trash can where we saw her abducted. We then see that footage…

We hear a woman screaming behind a big metal door; it’s Amy. She begs to go home, but “Josh” isn’t going to do that. We watch her scream as he rapes her. She eventually gets to see what became of Megan, and it’s not pretty. He then seals Amy into a barrel with Megan’s rotten corpse, which terrifies her, as he digs a barrel-sized hole. As he digs, she begs and bargains with him from inside the barrel. This goes on for a long time.

Eventually, he pushes the barrel into the hole and fills it in, with Amy screaming and begging the whole time.

Eventually, the screaming stops.

Brian’s Commentary

Brian’s Rating:****

It starts out fairly weak, with two girls talking about nonsense, but it devolves from there. Megan doesn’t go missing until about 40 minutes in, and it’s a little dull before that. Everything is done as found footage, mostly through video chats.

The “horror” aspects don’t really come into it until Amy disappears, and then it gets pretty extreme. There’s no supernatural elements or creatures here, just a kidnapper and victims; the horror comes from the idea that this kind of thing happens all the time in the real world.

I’m not quite sure why Josh would film all this and then leave the camera in the last place anyone saw Amy.

Kevin’s Commentary

So, we get to watch some “teenage” girls talking and partying for a while. For too long of a while. Eventually a predator does start making his moves, and Megan disappears. Then we get more talk from Amy, and we see her getting pressure from the predator. A true crime show wades in.

It’s very tame until it isn’t any more, it goes to the other extreme.

It’s easy to watch this sort of thing and think how dumb the girls are for falling for it, but this sort of thing (and lesser things) does really happen to the naive and inexperienced and unwary.

Kevin’s Rating: ***

#episode_3