Lost Girls (2020)

Lost Girls is a true-crime film that refuses the easy thrills, choosing instead to look you in the eye and ask what happens when the people who go missing are treated as disposable. Liz Garbus directs with a steady, humane restraint, letting the dread seep in from the margins while keeping the focus where it belongs: on a mother’s grief, fury, and stubborn love, carried by Amy Ryan in a performance that feels lived-in rather than “acted.” The movie’s tension comes less from chasing clues than from watching institutions stall, deflect, and fail—making every small push for answers feel hard-won and urgent. It’s a quiet, heavy watch rather than a twisty procedural, but if you want a mystery-thriller with conscience and compassion, it’s deeply moving and hard to shake.

Lost Girls is clearly trying to be a grounded, respectful true-crime drama about a mother forcing a system to pay attention to women it’s happy to ignore, and that mission comes through. The problem is it plays so subdued that what should feel urgent often feels muted, with pacing that can be plodding and an investigation thread that never quite deepens into the catharsis you’re waiting for. It also ends in a way that can feel dramatically incomplete, less like a payoff and more like the film simply runs out of road. If you want a tense, twisty thriller or a tightly constructed mystery, this may frustrate you—but if you can accept a restrained, advocacy-leaning drama with strong work from Amy Ryan, it’s worth a look.