Megan Is Missing

Megan Is Missing
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Michael Goi
Produced by	Mark Gragnani
Written by	Michael Goi
Starring	Amber Perkins Rachel Quinn Dean Waite Jael Elizabeth Steinmeyer Kara Wang
Cinematography	Keith Eisberg Josh Harrison
Edited by	Michael Goi
Production company	Trio Pictures
Distributed by	Anchor Bay Films
Release date	May 3, 2011 (2011-05-03)
Running time	89 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$30–35,000[2][3]

Megan Is Missing is a 2011 American found footage psychological horror film^[4] written, directed, edited, and co-produced by Michael Goi.^[5] The film revolves around the days leading up to the disappearance of Megan Stewart (Rachel Quinn), a popular high school student in North Hollywood who decided to meet up with a boy she was interacting with online, and the subsequent investigation launched by her best friend Amy Herman (Amber Perkins). Goi based the film on a series of real-life cases of child abduction. It was notably endorsed by Marc Klaas, the founder of KlaasKids Foundation.

Originally developed as a low-budget independent feature in 2006, the film was shot for $30–35,000.^[2] It did not find distribution until Anchor Bay Films gave it a limited theatrical release in 2011.^[6] The film was very controversial upon its release. Marketed as an educational film, Megan Is Missing was banned in New Zealand^[3] and has been heavily criticized by critics for its confrontational violence and the over-sexualization of the adolescent protagonists. Goi wrote the script in 10 days and shot the film over the course of a week. Because of the graphic content, he requested that the parents of the young cast be on set during filming so that they were fully aware of their involvement in the project.^[7]

It is one of the first computer screen films. The film experienced renewed popularity in 2020 after clips of the film were shared on TikTok. Goi later issued public warnings to prospective viewers after many users began calling the film "traumatizing."^[8] Entertainment Weekly called it "2011's scariest horror film."^[9] The film placed 6th in the DEG Watched at Home Top 20 Chart for Week Ending November 21, 2020.^[10]

Plot

Megan Stewart is a fourteen-year-old high school honors student who is well known and liked amongst her peers. However, she lives a double life — she suffers from a deep history of child sexual abuse and has become addicted to drugs. On January 2, 2007, while asking one of her party friends for drugs via webcam, she is shown to have a dysfunctional home life due to her verbally abusive mom.

Amy Herman, her best friend, is an outcast who is struggling with the transition into being a teenager. She has loving parents, and her home life is a positive environment, but she is a victim of bullying. She has a childlike adoration for teddy bears and has a deep sisterly bond with Megan, who is very protective of her.

To celebrate Amy's upcoming fourteenth birthday, Megan invites her to a rave party she is attending and starkly defends Amy when a superficial party crowd begins mocking her. That night, Amy becomes intoxicated and gets assaulted when she refuses to have sex with one of the guys attending the party. She is shocked when she accidentally walks in on Megan performing oral sex on the party's host. Megan later apologizes for the bad experience. While recording a video diary, she has Megan tell her life story in which she reveals she does not know who her biological father is and that her stepfather is in prison for raping her at nine years old. She explains to Amy that her hostile relationship with her mother is due to her never forgiving Megan for reporting him to authorities. Amy quickly comforts her before the video ends.

Megan begins talking to Josh, a man who claims to go to a nearby high school. He states that his little brother broke his web camera, which leaves her unable to see his face. After Josh fails to reveal himself at a party, she becomes angry at him. However, she sympathizes with him when he states that he is shy and was intimidated by her popularity. Amy begins to feel left out, and Megan introduces her to him before agreeing to meet in person behind a diner. On January 15, she goes missing, and authorities begin to assume she ran away. Amy begins a concentrated effort to find her friend and talks with Josh online to see if he knows anything about her whereabouts.

This encounter leaves Amy scared due to Josh's threatening remarks. After security footage of Megan's abduction at the diner is released, she reports him to the police, re-sparking the investigation. Subsequently, disturbing photographs of a tortured and bloodied Megan's eyes, mouth, and nostrils forced open while being immobilized in a contraption begin to appear on an online fetish forum. Three weeks after her disappearance, Amy visits a hiding spot underneath an old bridge where she and Megan tell each other secrets and record a video diary with her favorite teddy bear. Right before the video ends, someone is about to grab her. Amy had disappeared as well. Investigators find her video camera in a garbage can near her hiding spot.

In unedited footage found on the camera, Josh unlocks a door in a cellar where he has been hiding Amy. She is in her underwear and is chained to the wall by her neck. She begs for her teddy bear before he makes her eat food in a dog bowl. He comes back and rapes her. He later returns to apologize for kidnapping her and says he will let Amy go. He then shows her a large plastic barrel and tells her to get into it so that she will not know where he lives when they leave. After Josh opens up the barrel, Amy sees Megan's corpse and runs away screaming. Josh grabs Amy and forces her into the barrel along with Megan's body before locking it. He digs a large ditch in an unidentifiable forest while Amy pleads desperately with him from within the barrel. Josh pushes the barrel into the hole and fills it up before picking up his flashlight and walking away. During the ending credits, a clip shows Megan and Amy discussing their futures.

Cast

• Amber Perkins as Amy Herman
• Rachel Quinn as Megan Stewart
• Dean Waite as Josh
• Jael Elizabeth Steinmeyer as Lexie
• Kara Wang as Kathy
• Brittany Hingle as Chelsea
• Carolina Sabate as Angie
• Trigve Hagen as Gideon
• Curtis Wingfield as Ben
• April Stewart as Joyce Stewart
• Reyver Huante as Bill Herman
• Tammy Klein as Louise Herman
• Lauren Leah Mitchell as Callie Daniels
• Kevin Morris as Detective Simonelli

Production

Casting

The majority of the cast of Megan Is Missing were inexperienced or first-time actors. This was intentional, as Goi wanted the characters to be portrayed by non-recognizable actors for the film to have an "air of reality." Quinn, who was a dance and film student, was cast in the eponymous role of Megan Stewart.^[2] Quinn had starred in several commercials, industrial videos, and student films before the production of Megan Is Missing, although this film marked her first professional acting experience. Perkins, who had previously only done background work for television shows and commercials, was cast in the lead role of Amy Herman. This marked her feature film debut. The role of the villain, Josh, was given to Australian actor Dean Waite.^[11]

Filming

The film was made with a very low budget which is part of the reason the found footage format was utilized. Goi self-financed the film as he believed that investors weren't going to fund the film due to the violent script. Megan Is Missing was shot over the course of a week in 2006 with a small crew of only 5 people and a budget of $35,000. It was filmed with "no motion picture lighting equipment, no grip equipment, no professional sound recording equipment" in order to have a "raw" and realistic feel to it.^[2] The vast majority of the cast were adolescents and Goi required that their parents be on set during filming due to the graphic nature of the film.^[7]

Reception

Film critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas deemed the "amateur aesthetics of its cinematography" as crucial to the film's authentic feel. She stated that it takes a tonal shift after the photographs of Megan's graphic torture are shown on the screen. The camera's gaze, which belonged to the heroines at the beginning of the film, is turned against them in the final act adds to the horrific revelations.^[12]

In a positive review for The Leaf-Chronicle (Tennessee), film critic Jamie Dexter compared the film to the Paranormal Activity franchise and The Blair Witch Project (1999) and praised the storyline, stating "It took days for me to shake the horrible feeling this movie left in me, but that just means it was effective in what it set out to do — show this very real and plausible scenario of how internet predators work".^[13] In a negative review for the Oklahoma Gazette, Rod Lott mostly criticized the characterization and portrayal of Megan, stating:

Here, the only thing writer/director Michael Goi achieves is making Megan 100 percent repugnant from the start. You don't care about her because he goes out of his way to present her as the kind of kid who probably deserves a good punch to knock her off her pedestal. Honestly, I was so sick of hearing her speak her petty, self-absorbed yapping, I couldn't wait for her to go missing. This is amateurish trash disguised as an 'important' message movie.

He went on to condemn the acting from the rest of the cast:

Although fictional, Megan Is Missing aims to deliver the currently in-vogue cinema-verite experience, where the entire thing is assembled through supposedly found footage, from camcorders and smartphones to surveillance tapes and newscasts, not to mention one photograph that comes off as a punch line, although that's clearly not its intent. It doesn't help that the movie is so poorly acted, it feels like a put-on. When we see a news report on actors re-creating an abduction, the meta mistakenly leaps to self-parody.^[14]

Beyond Hollywood and DVD Verdict also panned the film, with Beyond Hollywood calling it "majorly disappointing" and DVD Verdict stating that they "[wished] this disc had been missing from the box".^[15][16] HorrorNews.net gave a more positive review, saying that the first portion of the film "really works", although they felt that the final twenty-two minutes "went a little overboard".^[17]

Ban in New Zealand

In October 2011, New Zealand's Office of Film and Literature Classification banned Anchor Bay's release of this film by classifying it as "objectionable". They claimed that it contained sexual violence and sexual conduct involving young people to such an extent and degree, and in such a manner that if it was released it would be 'injurious to the public good'. They went on to say that it relished in the spectacle of one girl's ordeal, including a three-minute rape scene. They also stated that it sexualized the lives of young teenage girls to a "highly exploitative degree".^[18]

Popular culture and director's warnings

In November 2020, the film became a pop culture sensation after it went viral on the video-sharing app TikTok. The platform is where the film has its largest audience since its release.^[19] Users began posting their reactions as the film progresses, with many calling it "traumatizing". The hashtag for the film has over 83 million views.^[20] After being informed by Perkins that the film had gone viral, Goi later issued a trigger warning for prospective viewers: "Do not watch the movie in the middle of the night. Do not watch the movie alone. And if you see the words 'photo number one' pop up on your screen, you have about four seconds to shut off the movie if you're already kind of freaking out before you start seeing things that maybe you don't want to see".^[8][2] Goi stated that he made the film with the purpose of it being a "wake-up call" to parents but instead it is children who discover the film and make it resurface sporadically. The film later began trending on Twitter.^[2][9] Although it has garnered significant popularity as of 2021, the film has seen very little distribution on a physical format, with DVD copies becoming increasingly scarce with no apparent plans for a rerelease.

Remake and potential sequel

A few years after its release, a production company in Mexico approached Goi to make a Spanish language remake of the film with a Mexican cast. Goi declined the offer as he did not want to revisit the grim subject matter. However, he stated that he has theorized making a sequel but no progress has been made due to there being "no angle" for him to take the story.^[2]

References

Further reading

• Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra (2014). Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality. McFarland. p. 56. ISBN 978-0786470-77-8.

External links

• Official website
• Megan Is Missing at IMDb