When I think of ‘Megan is Missing’ I remember the horrifying images and videos of two girls who were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. I saw ‘Megan is Missing’ for the first time when I was eleven years old. Most of the plot I do not recall. However, the vivid images of Megan’s body and Amy’s screams as she begs for her life, followed me for years. I also remember that ‘Megan is Missing’ is supposedly based on a true story.

“Megan is Missing’ is about a fourteen-year-old girl named Megan Stewart.  She is a young partier and seemingly a drug addict who has sex with men to keep her mind off of the troubles she has at home. She begins chatting with a man who goes by the name of ‘Josh’ on social media. Megan is later kidnapped after meeting up with ‘Josh’ who turns out to be a catfisher. The community and police begin a search for Megan. Megan’s best friend Amy Herman is later kidnapped by the same man while recording a vlog in the woods. Amy is locked in a dark cell and tortured mentally and physically by ‘Josh’ who eventually puts her in a blue barrel and buries her alive.

After recently watching this movie once again my perspective of the movie has changed from not only horror but disgust and sadness as well. My young child self believed that this was something that never happened. The brutal and disgusting way Amy was tortured and murdered was as foreign to me as aliens in another universe. My young mind did not understand the concept of cruelty or that some people out in the world were just despicable human beings.

Today, I am able to understand the way rape-culture has been ingrained into society and is now seen as normal. Megan was sexualized at the young age of fourteen. In a scene, at the beginning of the movie, Megan is trying to convince her friend to save her some drugs but the friends boyfriend will only give her some if she has sex with him. When Megan refuses he tries again and says, “So what’s it gonna be Maggie? You know only Giddeon’s slaves get the fairy dust.” Megan eventually agrees and tells him she will be right over. In another scene, Megan is forced to perform oral sex at a party which she later brushes off as ‘nothing’ when explaining what happened to Amy.

Sadly, the events of ‘Megan is Missing’ happen everywhere every day. The message behind this film is to show the dangers of social media and the internet. When it was released in 2011, ‘Megan is Missing’ was a very unconventional film. It addressed topics, such as rape and objectification of young girls, that were normally avoided. However, the film addressed these topics in a very graphic and horrifying way that eventually led the film to be banned in New Zealand, removed from Netflix, and no longer available for purchase on Amazon Prime. Many people describe ‘Megan is Missing’ in a negative light due to the violence it shows.

Now the violence in ‘Megan is Missing’ is considered to be ‘normal’ and ‘accurate’ rather ‘unnecessarily violent’ by critics. I believe this is because the violence from ‘Megan is Missing’ was not commonly seen before. Now that more movies use the same type of brutal violence it is now normal and therefore less shocking.

Looking back, ‘Megan is Missing’ was so scary to me because I had never seen anything like it before. Over the years I have built up a tolerance for violence and horror. I believe that is why this film is less shocking to me today.  It is the same way with critics and the other people who watched this film. ‘Megan is Missing’ was removed from Netflix and Amazon was because it was unexpected and new. People are always afraid of new things and are afraid of change.

I believe ‘Megan is Missing’ is one of the turning points that will allow people to stop believing kidnapping or rape is something that should be easy to overcome. I believe that the graphic violence was necessary is ‘Megan is Missing’. You get to the point of a problem quicker if you say what the problem is directly rather than beating around the bush.