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Lost Girls Movie Review

Lost Girls is a 2020 mystery drama film directed by Liz Garbus and starring Amy Ryan. It’s a film that could have been even stronger, but it’s still an undeniably moving watch.

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“It’s not your daughter, Mrs. Gilbert,

which is why it’s important that you don’t talk to the media“

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It’s about a woman who will stop at nothing to find out what happened to her daughter. Along the way, she has to deal with the incompetent police department. This is no ‘Three Billboards’ first and foremost. It’s a full drama, not a dramedy. It’s also a weaker movie thematically speaking as it doesn’t delve deeper into its themes, but still it’s very good in its own right, and it deals with a story that actually happened, which makes it even scarier that they never found out who this killer is/was.

The ending is powerful, there is no denying that. The movie doesn’t shy away from how some murders never get resolved unfortunately. It also effectively deals with a mother’s complicated feelings surrounding this case. If she finds out what happened, then it’s all over and she knows she lost her daughter. But if she remains in the unknown territory, that is going to anger her throughout her life. It’s a tragic conundrum with no easy way out.

The movie’s at its best when it’s dealing with the protagonist’s complicated feelings. Mari Gilbert is superbly realized here, and in no small part thanks to Amy Ryan’s phenomenal turn in the role. She’s confident, she demands your attention and she sold all of her emotional scenes properly. She’s the main reason to see this movie and one of the better performers of this year.

Others are also good, though less developed of course. I liked her daughters, in particular seeing Thomasin McKenzie of ‘Leave no Trace’ fame was nice and she was again very competent. But the men were too cold or incompetent and the movie turned too much into a feminist picture that painted all men as accomplices in crime basically.

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Lost Girls was directed by this renowned documentarian, but she leaned away so much from the facts, in fact, that the result was a somewhat rushed, overly personal and intimate movie. Again, that made it very moving, but two low-scale and not as ambitious.

Although Lost Girls is overly intimate and far from ambitious in terms of scope, it’s still a true crime drama that is heartbreaking and suitably angry in its tone. It’s no ‘Three Billboards’, but it’s a very good movie in its own right that has a strikingly dark, honest and psychologically complex ending. The central performance from Amy Ryan is also phenomenal.