When Mari Gilbert's daughter Shannan suddenly disappears and the police don't really seem to be that bothered by it so she decides to take it upon herself to investigate a gated community in Long Island, her last known location and a frantic 911 call.
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Lost Girls is inspired by true events and based on a very true story which is in a book by Robert Kolker named Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery. To which makes you realise that the film is certainly not going to have a nice happy ending. Not that anything throughout watching suggests that, but it does raise the question why know one really cared and how someone has got away with killing so many girls.
Its so utterly sad that the reasons behind the police not really being bothered about the missing girls due to the fact that they were all prostitutes. Should that really matter if someone is missing? Surely to end up in that type of work something has gone very wrong for them at some point? Especially when the details of how similar the girls were in these cases.
Mari Gilbert was not a perfect mother and she was the first to admit that but it did not mean she did not care about Shannan and now wanted to find her daughter. Even more so after the 911 call that they did not follow up until an hour later, despite how frantic and upset she was at 4am. Also gaining information from Sherre another of her daughters and she also had Sarra who was suffering with illness as well, this was not fully clear until near the end of the film.
When Mari pushes and pushes for the police to search the area what is found could never have been expected. Bodies in the marsh/wooded area near the gated community. None of them actually Shannan and ranging different time periods, looking to be the work of serial killer. This then leads to family members of these murdered girls to come together and fight for the memories of their loved ones not to be forgotten.
Amy Ryan is a driving force in the film and it is a very difficult role to take on, the true story as we see after the final scene is even more tragic for Mari Gilbert. It was fantastic to see Thomasin McKenzie in the film as well and I will be watching her career very closely since Jojo Rabbit and it looks as though she has some very interesting projects in the future. Gabriel Byrne is in more of a supporting role, but still very good to watch on screen.
Overall the film is a tough watch as it leaves you very frustrated with how everything is dealt with, knowing that these girls were not looked for in an appropriate manner and deemed to be nothing of importance due to the job they were carrying out. Which allowed a man (or group) to get away with murder and to this day they still have not been found and I find that mind blowing and so tragic.
