‘My daughter didn’t run away… she’s missing.’
The market has become so flooded in recent years with films, documentaries, TV shows and podcasts about serial killers that I’m struggling to come up with an interesting intro for this review, such is the number of articles I have already coughed up on this subject. Perhaps it’s slightly worrying that despite the sheer amount of media already out there, society’s hunger for murder and mayhem remains undimmed. Lost Girls is slightly different I suppose in as much as the film is focused more on the victims and their families, rather than the person who carried out these terrible crimes…
Shannon Gilbert is a prostitute and she is missing. She is also a daughter, a sister and a person. This is the primary underlying message throughout Liz Garbus’ debut feature film (Garbus is a veteran documentarian it should be said and that attention to detail is utilised successfully throughout Lost Girls). Shannon’s mother (Amy Ryan) will stop at nothing to find her daughter – even if that means rubbing police chief Dormer (Gabriel Byrne) up the wrong way. Jojo Rabbit‘s Thomasin McKenzie also stars as Shannon’s defiant sister Sherre.
Visually, Lost Girls is very an extension of the grim subject matter. The affluent Oak Beach area of Long Island where Shannon was last seen is buried under shades of washed out grey and drab blues reflecting the stark desperation and ultimate tragedy in Mari Gilbert’s search for her missing daughter.
This is a solid movie. Garbus does a great job of presenting the facts without pointing the finger of blame at anyone. Both those within law enforcement and the grieving families are portrayed as real human beings, all of whom are flawed and selfish in their own way. The problem here is oversaturation, particularly in the true crime genre and particularly on Netflix. How many more dead girls will we as an audience sit through before we start to switch off? A ghoulish question and one that I, someone who watches pretty much everything in the genre, certainly don’t have an answer for.