Megan Is Missing [DVD]

Megan Is Missing is not your typical horror movie—it’s raw, unsettling, and emotionally intense. The found-footage style adds to the realism, making it feel more like a documentary than fiction. It’s hard to watch at times, especially because it deals with very real and scary dangers teens face online.While the acting and production aren’t Hollywood-level polished, the message about internet safety is powerful and timely. This film is definitely for mature audiences who can handle its graphic content. If you want a cautionary tale that sticks with you and sparks important conversations, this movie is worth watching.

I could go into all the underage "wish fulfillment" this movie has, but I'll ignore to keep this shorter I'll just say this was made by people that have thought WAY too much on underage girls and wanting to hurt them. Thats accusatory and I stand by it, the people making this movie should be looked at.This movie is not a horror movie, not a thriller, not drama, it is a mock snuff fill with underage girls. Even back in 2007-2008 this movie would have been crap to me. People had posted stuff like "great movie you can only handle watching once!" so I was looking forward to it and I have gained nothing here. The "horror/thriller" part of the movie comes with underage girls being lured to a horrible end and the movie dwells on it....for a disturbing amount of time almost as if the people making the movie were projecting their own fantasies. And I'm not just talking about the end here, the part were Megan is talking about being 10 and at camp was disturbing and the attitude towards it is simply "Oh well, it's not THAT bad." Yes it is bad and how the Hell did that get green lit? That adds nothing to the suspense or horror/thriller.We can also go into the whole "facetiming in perfect video quality" in 2007 or the fact that no police force would have been apathic to a case like this. We can talk about how predators do not stick around the same area after the first abduction or how the families are way to calm with their daughters missing and the "news" coverage saying "oh maybe they ran away." But that's mostly nitpicking, it does just make me mad that they can't even get those details right.If you want to scare kids with the horrors of the dark web there now way better movies.

Megan Stewart, 14, and her best friend Amy Herman, 13, though opposites in personality, are best friends. Megan carries the front of being the most popular girl in school, but this masks a lifestyle of hard partying, drugs, alcohol and indiscriminate sex. Amy, unpopular and socially awkward, clings to her relationship with Megan as a lifeline to social acceptance. Together, these two young girls forge a deep friendship based on their mutual needs. Using all the technology accessible for meeting people and chatting, the two girls regularly communicate by webchat cameras or cell phone, and even meet boys online. As Megan seeks friends who are different from her usual posse of hanger-ons, she meets a 17 year-old boy named Josh in a chat room. Megan and Josh bond quickly, leaving Amy feeling a bit left out. One day, Megan goes to meet Josh in person, and she is never seen again. Amy launches into a concentrated effort to find her friend. Josh is initially sympathetic to Amy's efforts, then begins to be abusive to her online. As the media swirls around the story of Megan's disappearance, Amy suddenly disappears as well. The movie plunges you into the hell of the real world as seen through the eyes of a child.Based on seven actual cases, MEGAN IS MISSING is an uncompromising, gut-wrenching view of the world children live in today. Harrowing in its realism, the film uses only fact-based incidences to depict the lives of ordinary kids walking in the midst of extraordinary evil. I saw this film at a screening in New York, and it is simply the most disturbing movie you will ever see. There is a party scene that feels like the cameras just drifted into a real party and recorded all the sex and drinking that kids do when they lie to their parents about where they are at night. It is impossible to forget, and once you get over the shock of what you've experienced (and experienced is exactly the right word, because the movie is filmed in such a way that it makes you feel that it's happening NOW) you start looking at your own life and your own neighborhood in a different way. There are news broadcasts in the film that look just like you've turned on the TV in your house and there's a story about an abducted child. And without giving too much about the ending away (although the very beginning of the film has a title card which explains exactly what will happen in the film, and you are still shocked when it does happen), the final moments of the film leave you feeling so horrified and numb that I forgot to take a breath.The two young actresses in the film, Amber Perkins (who I believe is the niece of actress Elizabeth Perkins) who plays Amy and Rachel Quinn who plays Megan, give such realistic performances that it is sometimes difficult to believe that they are performers and not real people. You never really see the man who is their predator, but his presence is creepy. This is a film about children which is definitely NOT for children to see. It is unrated, but would definitely be an NC-17 or a very strong R.The DVD is widescreen (1.78) and anamorphically enhanced. There are many split-screen sequences in the film when the girls are talking to each other on their cell phones or on the computer, so you can see both sides of the conversation at the same time. The sound is in stereo without prominent surrounds, which is in keeping with the style of the movie. There is a director's commentary track where he talks about all the actual events that inspired the scenes in the film, a producer and cast commentary track where the young actresses discuss how they felt about performing difficult scenes, a deleted scene, cast interviews and a video interview with Marc Klaas, whose daughter Polly Klaas was abducted and murdered. He talks about why the film made an impression on him and what parents can do to safeguard their children in this age of electronic communication.