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Megan is Missing YouTube Trailer

What is 'Megan is Missing', The Found Footage Horror Movie Terrifying TikTok?

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | November 16, 2020 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | November 16, 2020 |


Megan is Missing YouTube Trailer

You really can’t predict what’s going to be a hit. No matter how the almighty algorithms dictate it or how much money a studio puts behind their best efforts, you can’t force people to get truly revved up for something they otherwise don’t care about. Sometimes, the weirdest things beat the odds or discover new audiences years after their initial release. See how the comedy Bad Teacher and the Keanu Reeves horror movie Knock Knock suddenly became huge on Netflix this year without rhyme or reason. Now, the denizens of TikTok have scrambled around a little-known found footage horror movie from way back in 2011.

Over the weekend, Megan is Missing began trending on social media. Users of TikTok began filming their reactions to the movie, describing their shock and trauma at what they’d seen.







Things got so frenzied that the movie’s director, Michael Goi, took to TikTok himself after his leading actress, Amber Perkins, told him about the viral phenomenon. He even issued a trigger warning of sorts.



‘I didn’t get to give you the customary warnings that I used to give people before they watched Megan is Missing, which are: do not watch the movie in the middle of the night, do not watch the movie alone, and if you see the words ‘photo number one’ pop up on your screen, you have about four seconds to shut off the movie if you’re already freaking out, before you start seeing things that maybe you don’t want to see.’


Megan is Missing describes itself as being inspired by real cases of sex trafficking. It tells the story of the eponymous Megan, a teenage girl who disappears after choosing to meet up with a boy she was chatting to online. What follows is an intensely graphic series of events, including child rape, mutilation, torture, death, and exploitation.



Reviews for the film upon its initial release were uniformly negative. Many critics described the film as needlessly exploitative and derivative to boot, with frequent comparisons made to The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. The general ineptitude of the direction was also called out. In some scenes, you can see the boom mic in shot.

The film is actually banned in New Zealand after the country’s Office of Film and Literature Classification deemed it ‘objectionable’ and potentially ‘injurious to the public good’, drawing particular attention to a three-minute rape scene and the sexualization of its teenage cast.

Megan is Missing seems like your bog-standard shoddy gorenography exploitation film that dresses itself up as important by claiming it’s inspired by real events. Its viral status feels like a pure fluke, one that could have happened with any shocking horror film. Imagine if a whole new generation of teens decided to scare one another to death with Audition or Martyrs. It’s a time-honored tradition to get all your friends to freak out over a scary movie. Now, it’s also a viral challenge.

If your interest has been sufficiently piqued, you can rent it on iTunes, YouTube, or Amazon Prime US.