Sorry about that, but I had to get my plea out of the way before I officially start this. So "Megan is Missing" does the whole "based on true events" gimmick and follows two 13-14 year old girls who seem to devote a lot of time to web-chatting; eachother and other dumb sounding girls. One of the girls, Megan, is a notorious party girl slut who likes to attend high-school parties and blow her brain dead classmates for free drugs. There's numerous times where she regales her nerdy friend, Amy, of all the times she was raped as a very small child. Which... made her a whore, I guess. Psychology 101. She starts conversing with a fella by the name of SkaterDude online. She goes to meet up with him behind a diner and is never heard from again. Her friend Amy then starts chatting with SkaterDude (a.k.a. Josh) and when she starts giving the cops and news media some information on Josh, Amy goes missing too...
This all leads up to the last 22 minutes on Amy's video diary following her abduction, in which the film becomes a pretty over-the-top exploitation/torture film in the most shameless sense. What's really confusing about it is that the movie credits itself as being something meant to spread awareness of online predators... The cover features a quote from Marc Klaas - the guy whose daughter was kidnapped from a slumber party in their home and found murdered back in '93 - which reads: "A powerful, important film that deserves both attention and discussion". Did he actually fucking watch this?! Calling "Megan is Missing" a film that deserves attention and discussion is like saying that "Niku daruma" deserves public praise for addressing the reality that women HAVE, in fact, been kidnapped, dismembered, gutted and raped. If you sit your teenager down to watch "Megan is Missing" in hopes that they'll discuss it with you after, you're gonna look like the most idiotic parent in the world, plus your kid is gonna think you're fucked in the head. I really don't think that Mr. Klaas saw this movie, though I'm sure he heard it contained the topic of disappearing children and was misled into thinking it was a reputable "wake up call" film. Not the case, sadly...
First of all, the majority of this flick is dull as shit, consisting mostly of these and numerous other teenagers acting like how out-of-touch adults THINK that modern teens act and talk like. I mean, I know they do to a degree, but just listen to the dialog and watch just a few scenes outta this and you'll see what I mean. "You want us to invite HER? But she's, like, totally fucking lame and doesn't even dress like us!". Yeesh... Like After School Special dialog but with more cursing... After Megan disappears, they show some funny faux-news footage and a hilariously dramatic reenactment of the abduction, complete with lightning strikes every 4 seconds. Then, the friend is kidnapped and... of course... the antagonist records it all on her camera for the sake of "found footage" (shitty fucking genre!) At this point, it becomes "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" or "Hostel" (whatever) showing her locked in a dungeon and also including a lengthy rape scene. Not "opening peoples eyes" to the potential dangers of online interaction, but straight-up BRUTAL horror flick. Plain and simple. And I wasn't all that impressed. Yeah, they took the violence overboard and got controversial, which is something I typically tend to appreciate in cinema, though the whole "found footage" angle just ruined it for me. I'm so sick of it...
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