Lost Girls (2020)

If you come to Lost Girls (2020, Netflix) seeking a serial killer movie with lots of gory details and pretty dead girls, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. If you like police procedurals and their (usually female) corpse-of-the-week formulas, you might not be satisfied with this film. If, however, you’re interested in a deep, dark look into the shameful ways vulnerable young women are thrown away and ignored even in death, then keep reading. Sadly, Lost Girls is based on a true story, and even worse than that is the realization that this film barely scratches the surface of a larger structural problem in our society that treats all women like they’re disposable.

Lost Girls opens with a soft, sweet song incongruously played over a scene of a young woman running for her life, at night, alone, with sinister headlights following her and seemingly ready to run her down. From there, we see hardworking blue-collar single mom, Mari Gilbert(Amy Ryan) taking shifts at separate jobs, fielding phone calls from one of her daughter’s schools regarding a suspension, and being an overall supportive mom. Mari tells two of her daughters, Sherre (Thomasin McKenzie) and Sarra (Oona Laurence) that their older sister, Shannan, will be joining them for dinner; this seems like a special occasion for Mari, while Sherre and Sarra are less impressed, and therefore, are less disappointed when Shannan never shows up.

A phone call from a strange doctor, several phone calls from Shannan’s boyfriend, and Mari’s inability to reach Shannan set off her Mommy Senses, thus she begins the process of reporting her daughter as a missing person. The local police schmuck Dean Bostick (Dean Winters, basically playing every character he’s ever played) refuses to take Mari seriously, and even police commissioner Richard Dormer (Gabriel Byrne) seems more cautious of his reputation than being helpful. This sends Mari down a disturbing path of tracking Shannen’s whereabouts herself. At every turn, Mari’s mocked, stalled, dismissed, blamed, even threatened. Despite the harassment, Mari doesn’t give up and never lets herself succumb to shock and dismay. Mari stays strong even when she finds out that her daughter became a sex worker and went missing after a job with a john in a rich, gated seaside town.

By the time Commissioner Dormer gets off his butt and actually does something helpful, Mari had assembled a small army of mothers and sisters of other young sex workers who have also gone missing in the same Long Island town. There’s no happy ending here, but there is at least closure.