If you’re looking for a happy ending, you won’t find one here. Even after the credits had been rolling for almost a minute, I sat with the premiere crowd in Park City, Utah, in somber silence. I knew the gist of the film before walking into the theater: girl goes missing, police don’t care, mother takes things into her own hands. But that short synopsis does no justice to the grim grittiness of the story of the disappearance of Shannan Gilbert.
We begin with Mari Gilbert (Amy Ryan), a single mom working two jobs to support her daughters Missy (Thomasin McKenzie) and Sarra (Oona Laurence). The town of Ellenville, New York, is tinted gray with nearly constant cloud cover and the dreary day-to-day hustle of making ends meet. The first time Mari smiles is when talking to her oldest daughter, Shannan, on the phone. A family dinner is in order. Unfortunately, it never happens.
Though Mari is disappointed, Shannan’s unexcused absence at dinner doesn’t appear to be anything new, but missing multiple phone calls is. After she’s been out of contact for two days, Mari drags her daughters around searching for the trail that will lead them to Shannan. They find some unsavory things in Shannan’s life, including the way she earned her money. She was a sex worker working off of Craigslist and traveling to various men’s houses via a blacked-out SUV and a driver.
The private neighborhood of Oak Beach was a hub for the kind of work Shannan did. It’s a privileged community that effortlessly ignores the disappearance of young women in its streets because they had nothing to do with them. Shutters are closed, doors are locked, security footage is taped over, and lost girls are forgotten.
The sheer amount of corruption in the Suffolk County police department is nauseating. The missing young women are dehumanized with labels like prostitute and hooker, rather than being looked at as human beings, sisters, daughters, and friends. But the shining light in Lost Girls is by far the coming together of the mothers, sisters, and friends of the lost girls. When remains are found and identified, the sense of love and support that the families give each other helps them through the toughest of times.
The film is based on true events, and shows footage from the real Mari Gilbert at the end. She’s talking to the news, and demanding justice for her daughter with a resolute passion that Amy Ryan executed perfectly. Thanks to the research and work of author Robert Kolker, who wrote Lost Girls, the world finally knows about the horrors committed in Oak Beach. Though the girls were lost, at least now they’ll never be forgotten.
Lost Girls premiered at Sundance 2020 from renowned American documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus. Garbus has received three Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, and two Academy Award nominations for her works. As stated in her Sundance biography, some of her projects include The Farm: Angola, USA; What Happened, Miss Simone?; Bobby Fischer Against the World; and Nothing Left Unsaid. Though Garbus is revered for her documentaries, Lost Girls is her narrative feature debut.
Lost Girls will be available for streaming on Netflix on March 13, 2020.
Photo by Britt Brooks