The horror genre has made it abundantly clear that turning a one-note gimmick into an ongoing franchise can regularly lead to the law of diminishing returns instantly settling in, so there were plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the release of this year’s thriller Missing.
After all, predecessor Searching was an incredible exercise in technical expertise, with the acclaimed thriller unfolding entirely through computer, cellphone, and various other camera-equipped screens. The John Cho-fronted story netted over $75 million at the box office on a budget of only $880,000, and secured an impressive Certified Fresh score of 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes to boot.
With the element of surprise gone, Missing had a lot of work to do in order to win over the skeptics who didn’t think the same setup could work a second time, regardless of its status as an entirely standalone sequel. Blowing those preconceptions out of the water, directors Will Merrick and Nick Johnson delivered a spiritual successor that was every bit the equal of its forebear.
Missing may have cost significantly more to produce and earned substantially less from theaters after the $7 million flick topped out at under $43 million in ticket sales, but an 88 approval rating on RT was well-deserved. This time around, Storm Reid gets caught up in an international conspiracy when her mother goes missing on vacation, forcing her to take action as the twists and turns becoming increasingly far-fetched and ludicrous – but in an entertaining way.
Having already turned a decent profit on the big screen, Missing is now tearing it up on-demand after FlixPatrol outed it as one of the Top 10 most-watched films among iTunes and Vudu customers in the United States. If there’s a threequel, then the bar has been set very high indeed.