Posted by Missing is definitely one of those movies that need to be explained. The plot is dense and full of surprises, the ending can be confusing, and the story is so complicated that you could miss many points. The movie does its best to guide the spectator through the events, but the story of how June’s mom, Grace Allen, disappears is disorienting. Let’s understand together what happened to June’s dad and mom, who are Kevin and Heather, and what happened in the past.
You can watch the official trailer for Missing here on Youtube.
Missing plot & ending explained: how June discovers the truth about her mom
Initially, the plot of Missing seems pretty straightforward: June is a young girl living with her mom, Grace Allen. As she knows, her dad died of meningioma years before, and now her mom is dating Kevin, a man she met a few months back. Grace and Kevin are going to Colombia for a short vacation together. June will stay home, partying with her friends.
Monday comes, and June goes to the airport, but there is no trace of Grace and Kevin. At that point, she begins an immersive investigation using all the digital tools she knows. She contacts the Colombian authorities and asks for help from Javier, a local man she hires on GoNinja. She will also succeed in accessing Kevin and Grace’s Google accounts, being able to track locations and read emails.
At that point, things get confusing. June discovers that Kevin is a criminal who just went out of jail. He uses many fake names and recently flirted with another girl via email. Kevin becomes the first suspect, and June starts believing he did something to her mom. Then she sees them on a romantic bridge through a public camera and, after looking at Kevin proposing to her mom, for a moment, she changes her mind about him.
Two big plot twists happen at that point on Missing. First, we see through another private recording that Kevin and June’s mom were kidnapped by a local gang. Second, June has a significant insight after looking at the vacation photos posted by Kevin. She discovers something shocking: the woman she saw next to Kevin on the cameras is not her mom Grace, but the mysterious girl Kevin was flirting with by email.
At this point, the plot of Missing gets more mysterious, and many elements need to be explained. By tracking Grace’s position, June discovers that her mom never took that flight. The police also discover that the kidnapping was staged and the gang was made of actors hired by Kevin. Even the girl who went with Kevin was hired, making her believe it was a sort of reality show. All these elements go in the same direction: Kevin wanted everyone to think that June’s mom, Grace, was kidnapped in Colombia and probably killed. To make things harder to solve, Kevin is shot by the police and dies with no chance of revealing why he did all that.
Meanwhile, the authorities discover that Grace Allen has a mysterious past and was using another name years before. This changes the public opinion about her, and June has to passively watch everyone on social media suspecting her mom to be a criminal. Heather, Grace’s friend, seems to know something but says she cannot reveal the secret. At this point, June discovers something big: an unknown contact wrote to Grace one year before, saying, “I found you.” She also finds an encrypted messenger that Kevin is using to contact an unknown user, and by asking for her number, she finds out who she is: it’s Heather, Grace’s friend. We are still far from the ending of Missing, but the elements start to emerge.
June is now sure Heather is hiding something. She ambushes her at her office, but it’s too late: someone killed her. She was blackmailed by someone there in Los Angeles, threatening to kill her if she talked. Now June starts believing that the person who contacted her mom one year ago is the evil mastermind behind all this. And she’s right: he’s June’s dad, James, who isn’t actually dead. At this point, James knocks at June’s door. And while he explains a fake version of the events, we start to understand what happened to mom and daughter in the past. Let’s have the true story of Grace and June explained separately, until the ending of Missing.
The ending explained: the true story of June and Grace Allen
When June was a little girl, she lived with her mom and her dad, James. Her mom’s true name is not Grace but Sarah. James was a drug addict and was violent with Grace. To save her daughter from a toxic family, Grace decided to report James to the police: James will be arrested and will spend more than ten years in prison. Sarah asks for support as a victim of domestic violence, and who helps her is precisely Heather: not just a friend, but the woman who helped Sarah to enter the victims’ protection program. Heather will help Sarah acquire a new identity: that’s how she becomes Grace and starts a new life with June. Grace will edit the videos and create false documents so June will believe that her dad died, but he was actually in prison.
In the last months of prison, James, June’s dad, meets Kevin. They are both inmates, and James sets up an evil plan with Kevin: once he’s out, he will have to seduce Grace and become his boyfriend. At that point, the plan is to organize that trip and stage the kidnapping. The truth is that Kevin kidnaps Grace before the flight takes off, and Kevin will spend the vacation days with the other girl hired to stage the kidnapping. James is also the one who blackmails Heather: if Heather talks, they will discover James is alive and still a threat.
James is also able to watch June’s monitor through software previously installed by Kevin on her laptop. This way, Kevin understands that June is close to discovering everything and anticipates her by visiting her at home. Before it’s too late, James kidnaps June and brings her to her childhood home. There, we have the first good news: June’s mom, Grace, is still alive – James didn’t kill her yet.
At the ending of Missing, it’s not explained what James’ plan was; It’s probably not a good one anyway. He organized everything to make everyone believe Grace was kidnapped in Colombia, so he probably wanted everyone to believe she died there. Still, he didn’t kill Grace. He shoots her in front of June, though, and then he gets stabbed by Grace with a piece of mirror. June is blocked inside that room with her mother dying, but she has an idea: she knows the camera is watching her. She assumes her mother’s phone is close to the desk where James was observing them, so she talks to the camera summoning Siri, hoping her mom’s phone will listen. And that’s how June calls the police.
Missing has a happy ending that perfectly closes the plot and doesn’t need to be explained: June and Grace are safe; they facetime in the movie’s last scene. June is happy everything went well and writes “I love you” to her mom, finally expressing her feelings explicitly.
