Casey Chong presents a selection of must-see missing person movies which are based on true stories…
Grief, despair and overwhelmed emotions can happen to anyone, particularly when facing the cold, hard fact of losing your loved one(s). It could be your child, your wife or even your best friend. Stories like this can be seen in movies, regardless of whether they are fictional or taken from true crimes. We have great fictional ones like Breakdown, Frantic, Gone Baby Gone and of course, The Lady Vanishes, to name a few. But we are here to direct our focus into exploring seven of the best missing-person movies that are based on true stories…
Changeling (2008)
2008 was a banner year for Clint Eastwood, whose direction was seen with Changeling and Gran Torino, both which were met with positive responses. For Changeling, he did a great job executing an intriguing true story of Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), a single mother who insists her missing nine-year-old son is not Walter, even after the Los Angeles police department manages to locate him five months later. She claims her son is still missing and demands that the police keep looking for him.
This true story, which ties to the 1928 Wineville Chicken Coop murders in California’s Mira Loma, contains several engrossing angles. Eastwood’s assured direction ensures that even at an epic 142-minute length, the movie is consistently captivating as Christine’s never-ending search for the truth uncovers the underlying police corruption, incompetence and cover-up. The movie is also notable for one of Angelina Jolie’s best performances in her career, whose distressing but resilient portrayal of a mother earned her a well-deserved Oscar nomination in the Best Actress category. It’s the kind of role that can easily succumb to over-the-top histrionics, but Jolie’s nuanced acting helps to keep everything under control.
Missing (1982)
Costa-Gavras’s Missing, a joint Palme d’Or winner with Yol and a four-time Oscar nominee that earned a win for Best Adapted Screenplay, details on American businessman Ed Horman’s (Jack Lemmon) exhaustive search for his missing journalist-son, Charlie (John Shea), with the help of the latter’s wife, played by Sissy Spacek, during the 1973 Chilean military coup.
Both Lemmon and Spacek received well-deserved Oscar nominations in the acting categories, playing the respective father and wife roles with nuanced dramatic weight. Costa-Gavras’s direction isn’t just confined to the disappearance of Charlie Horman, but also explores the narrative depth of Ed and Beth’s grief and frustration, and thought-provoking themes of hard truth, manipulation, along with the political and bureaucratic injustice surrounding the U.S. foreign policy with the authoritarian Chilean government.
Lost Girls (2020)
Based on Robert Kolker’s non-fiction book Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery, Liz Garbus’s documentary background is put to good use in telling a compelling true story of Shannan Gilbert (Sarah Wisser), a sex worker who went missing in 2010. This leads to her mother, Mari’s (Amy Ryan) endless quest to search for her missing daughter at all costs, including putting pressure on the local police led by Commissioner Richard Dormer (Gabriel Byrne) to do their jobs.
Garbus delves into the desperation and fighting for the truth seen from Mari’s tenacious point of view, showcasing Amy Ryan’s engaging lead performance with enough emotional and dramatic depth. Garbus eschews the traditional Hollywood-style dramatization in favor of grounded realism, while the movie doesn’t shy away from addressing the social critique on how law enforcement gives little attention to cases that marginalize sex workers.
3096 Days (2013)
A provocative true-story German drama from the director of 2009’s Desert Flower, Sherry Hormann presents an unvarnished look at how a 10-year-old Natascha Kampusch (Amelia Pidgeon) was dragged into a van one morning in 1998. The kidnapper is Wolfgang Přiklopil (a genuinely creepy Thure Lindhardt), a young man who keeps her locked in a tiny cellar below his house. What’s shocking about 3096 Days is exactly what it is: Natascha has been held captive for over eight years as Přiklopil spends his time controlling and abusing her.
Antonia Campbell-Hughes, who plays the grown-up Natascha, is particularly notable for her commitment to method acting. This is especially true with the actress going as far as losing her weight drastically to reflect Natascha’s malnourishment as a result of Přiklopil’s perpetual torture. The movie is devoid of sugarcoating over its harrowing subject matter as Hormann’s matter-of-fact direction focuses on the psychological toll surrounding Natascha being constantly oppressed and humiliated throughout her years in captivity.
The Vanishing (2018)
Inspired by the true story of the Flannan Isles Lighthouse crew in 1900, where three lighthouse keepers disappeared without a trace, triggering speculation about what happened to them, director Kristoffer Nyholm uses the story as a groundwork for dramatizing the events, with The Vanishing taking place in the confines of a remote island that houses the Flannan Isles Lighthouse. The island setting allows Nyholm to delve into the ominous dread and a persistent sense of isolation of being cut off from civilization.
The story details the lighthouse keepers James (Gerard Butler), Thomas (Peter Mullan) and Donald (Connor Swindells), and how they end up discovering a chest of gold somewhere on the island. Nyholm keeps things moving at a pace reminiscent of a deliberate slow-burn, emphasizing more on the atmosphere and the psychological consequences of the discovery, along with murder at one point in the movie. All three actors, notably Gerard Butler and Peter Mullan, deliver subtle performances in their respective roles.
Fire in the Sky (1993)
Fire in the Sky came and went with little fanfare when it was first released in 1993, grossing around $20 million on a $15 million budget. That’s a pity because Robert Lieberman’s engaging mix of missing-person mystery drama with sci-fi elements is particularly fascinating. The film is based on Travis Walton’s book The Walton Experience, recounting the strange events that took place in Snowflake, Arizona, back in 1975.
Despite being heavily dramatized and altered to spice up the story, the basis of this unbelievable true story remains intact: Travis Walton (D. B. Sweeney), a logger who ends up abducted by aliens in a UFO one night. His disappearance draws speculations about whether he’s telling the truth or just an elaborate hoax to fool everyone after all. Fire in the Sky uses this angle to explore the alleged fact vs. fiction storytelling, where the movie focuses mainly on what Travis’s co-workers, particularly Mike Rogers (Robert Patrick), have witnessed during that particular night. The movie is also notable for its unnerving alien abduction scene, detailing Travis’s harrowing experience after finding himself waking up in the spaceship.
Agatha (1979)
A year before Michael Apted directed the acclaimed Loretta Lynn biopic in Coal Miner’s Daughter, he explored the true story surrounding Agatha Christie’s 11-day disappearance in 1926. What really happened to her remains a mystery till today, making it a solid foundation for Apted, who directed Kathleen Tynan and Arthur Hopcraft’s screenplay, to dramatize a what-if scenario during her disappearance. This gives the movie a sense of intrigue, mirroring the novelist’s life-imitating-art angle.
Here, Apted brings out the best in Vanessa Redgrave, whose understated performance as Agatha Christie subtly captures the character’s depression after her unfaithful husband (Timothy Dalton) wanted to file for a divorce. She is backed by Dustin Hoffman, who plays the curious reporter, while pre-James Bond Timothy Dalton equally excels as Agatha’s spiteful husband, Archie. Agatha might be a turn-off for those who are expecting a typical whodunit-style narrative, but Apted’s layered direction, along with the aforementioned acting showcase and the atmospheric, 1920s period details, help elevate the movie altogether.
Casey Chong
