User blog:Ponyo Fan/Ponyo's Movie Reviews: Megan is Missing

So today I decided I wanted to be preached at.

So I picked out a film which the main message was "don't be a skank online": Megan is Missing. I figured it'd be like any old Lifetime movie; girl is stupid, flash boob, girl dead.

My god. My god.

The film starts off with Megan and Amy, two girls that are very opposite; Megan is the popular girl, who basically lives Lindsay Lohan's lifestyle ("Ooh! Drugs! Those sound fun!"), but with school in between. Amy is a shy, socially awkward girl who probably would've turned to the Internet either way, but both of them start talking to a seventeen-year-old boy named Josh.

Okay. Things could be fine if...

Then Megan goes to meet him. In a diner, alone.



Considering the title, guess what happens?

Yep. She goes missing.

Missing white girl syndrome goes into play and there are news stories and police on the look for her; however, they never find anything and decide she just ran away.

Until Amy speaks up about Josh to the police. Why didn't she do that in the first place?!

Then Josh gets angry and tells Amy that she'd better stop talking about him to the police or else, and makes vague hints at watching her. She doesn't listen, and herself goes missing.

Then things get bad. Real bad.



As the above picture suggests, the last 22 minutes of the film are "found footage" from Amy's camera.

Amy is kidnapped by Josh, who holds her scantily-clad inside of a torture chamber of some sorts. He makes her eat out of a dog bowl for a while.

Then he rapes her.

It's not your standard Hollywood rape scene either, it's a long, uncomfortable three minutes of just her horrified face and some shaking.

Next he apologizes. "Oh, yeah, sorry I raped you five minutes ago."

Then he suggests she can go free by traveling through a barrel. When he opens the barrel, guess what's in it?

Why, Megan's rotting corpse, of course! Josh shoves her in the barrel, buries her with Megan in the middle of nowhere, and leaves her to die.

The end.

...Tanner, if you're out there, did you direct this?

It's not easy to offend me. I listen to Eminem. I've seen plenty of NC-17 films. I'd consider myself a very liberal person.

But this film? This film actually offended me.

The fact that this film, which like all "found footage" films, is absolute bullshit and was actually filmed, has a long, filmed, three-minute teenage rape scene that the director (who I'm still not entirely sure isn't Tanner in disguise), probably with one hand on Mr. Happy, decided "Yeah! That's okay, stick that in the movie!"

Then there's multiple kids organizations saying this is an "eye-opening" film that needs to be "discussed"...discuss what?

This is a straight-forward exploitation film. It rapes and kills two young fictional girls, and it gives you every little detail.

(I'd also like to note that this is rated MA15+ in Australia, the same rating as SKYRIM.)

This movie is banned in New Zealand and would probably be banned in the UK if it were submitted to the BBFC, and with good reason. The IMDb Parents Guide states "...people have debated whether it is appropriate enough to educate pre-teens with."

NO. MOST CERTAINLY DO NOT SHOW THIS MOVIE TO PRE-TEENS.

Overall, I give Megan is Missing zero out of five stars and recommend it to absolutely no one. Ever. God, I need a shower after viewing that.

Hopefully next time I'll be back with a more happy film. Ponyo out!