With recent series' like Netflix's Baby Reindeer and the subsequent media exploitation of its subjects, the questionable ethics of true crime consumption have been pushed to the forefront of any conscientious viewer's mind. Too often, these sensationalized accounts of harrowing real-life events fail to give adequate time or care to the stories of the victims or those affected by earth-shattering tragedies.
Keisuke Yoshida's Missing, a devastating examination of this liminal grief left behind by an unresolved tragedy, follows married couple Saori and Yutaka, played by Satomi Ishihara (Shin Godzilla, Attack on Titan) and Munetaka Aoki (Godzilla Minus One, Silence) respectively. After their six-year-old daughter Miu goes missing, the pair find that national news is no longer interested in covering the case and public concern is waning, so request the help of a local news team, led by journalist Sunada (Tomoya Nakamura), to reinvigorate interest in locating Miu. With rumours flying about Saori's troubled brother Keigo (Yusaku Mori) and a much hotter story about the mayor's illegitimate child to compete with, Sunada must battle the conflict of maintaining journalistic integrity in a field that increasingly only values scandal and shock.
Despite what the name suggests, Missing is less a twisting, turning true crime thriller and more a scathing indictment of how two grieving parents are failed by all the establishments tasked with helping them. The film's beating heart comes from a truly agonising performance from Ishihara as a mother pushed to her absolute limits of grief. At times, Saori's pain feels too monumental to even watch, swinging from palpable frustration at the incompetence of everyone around her to desperate wailing as she imagines a prospective future in which Miu is never found. One particularly miserable scene sees the news team convince a desperate Saori to stage a would-be birthday party for Miu, complete with cake and candles, all for the sake of footage that'll pull on an audience's heartstrings, with Yutaka seemingly the only one who can see this for the exploitative manipulation that it is. Munetaka Aoki's performance as Yutaka is more subtle and understated, but no less gut-wrenching, dealing with both the loss of his daughter and the unravelling of his wife's sanity – when he finally breaks, it's just as hard to watch.
Extreme emotions aside, it's the small details that make Missing a painfully realistic representation of a bloodthirsty media landscape that has no care for a case left in limbo. There's a particularly misogynistic flavour of victim-blaming shown when Saori becomes obsessed with reading hateful comments online that attack her for attending a pop concert on the day of – unbeknownst to her – Miu's disappearance, while predictably (and realistically), the police prove to be less than useless in the search for the little girl. The character of Keigo, who provides the film's backbone of mystery, personifies a cultural demonization of mental health (a topic particularly relevant in Japan's socially conscious society) and how rumours and speculation from overly-invested armchair sleuths affect everyone in the orbit of a tragedy.
While the unrelenting heaviness of Missing's emotionally harrowing drama will be hard to watch for some (parents especially), those who like their drama full of humanity, heart and eventual healing will find Missing to be worth the traumatic journey.
Missing plays at Nippon Connection Festival on May 30 and June 2.