Megan Is Missing

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Megan Is Missing a 2011 film is about two teenage girls named Megan Stewart and Amy Herman; Megan is a promiscuous young 14 year old who has a troubled past while Amy is a goody-good girl who's led a rather sheltered life. Somehow, the two girls manage to be best friends. Eventually, Megan begins talking to a guy named Josh online. She tells Amy about him and agrees to meet him. She vanishes after and Amy begins to make a video log about her feelings toward the turn of events. It does not go well.

Tropes used in Megan Is Missing include:
  • Adult Fear: This movie is ALL about the fear of losing children to online predators and boy does it hammer the point home. Over and over...
  • An Aesop: Don't always trust who you meet online.
  • Banned in China: The film is banned in New Zealand.
  • Based on a True Story: The whole film is based on six separate incidents involving teenage girls and sexual predators.
  • Being Watched: Amy gets this treatment after she reports "Josh" to the police and media.
  • Blatant Lies: Josh's excuses for not showing his face on webcam.
  • Break the Cutie: Amy.
  • Buried Alive: Amy suffers this fate at the end.
  • Daylight Horror: Several instances, like when Josh is watching Amy in the background of the bridge scene, or more disturbingly, after he finishes burying her alive, when he turns around to leave, the sun has just started coming up.
  • Downer Ending: Josh stuffs Amy into a barrel with Megan's dead and decaying body, then buries her alive. He isn't caught, either.
  • Infant Immortality: Averted severely.
  • Jittercam: There's a bit of this when it comes to the cell phone footage.
  • Meaningful Background Event: When Amy first goes to the bridge, you can see a man in the background, watching her if you look carefully.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: After Megan's second webcam chat with Josh, she leaves her room, but the camera remains on, giving the feeling that Josh is still silently watching. It lasts for about 15 seconds and is just...creepy.
  • Karma Houdini: Josh never gets caught.
  • Parental Incest: Megan's (unseen) stepfather.
  • Present Day Past: Set in 2007, but features technology more common now: most glaring is that the characters have video chats on their phones. While smartphones with this feature did exist in 2007, it seems unlikely that the characters would have such a phone at 13/14 years old at that time (being that the phones in question would be ridiculously expensive). It was probably done for ease of storytelling, and possibly slightly justified as the characters are mentioned as living in a relatively wealthy area of California.
  • Rape as Drama
  • Torture Cellar: Josh's chambers definitely count.