Mark Reviews Movies: STILL HERE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 3, 2020

Still Here tells the story of a missing girl from three perspectives—the family, a journalist, and the cops who are grudgingly forced to do their jobs. Director Vlad Feier and Peter Gutter's screenplay raises a lot of questions about grieving, journalistic ethics, and, most pointedly, about the assorted failures of the police. It's understandable that the movie doesn't have any easy answers to these subjects, but by the end, we're not even certain if it's asking the right or, for that matter, any real questions.

Michael (Maurice McRae, in a strong performance) doesn't know what to do. His daughter went missing more than a week ago. The police performed a brief investigation and haven't returned. Flyers around the neighborhood have gone unanswered. He, his wife Tiffany (Afton Williamson), and elder son Andre (Jared Kemp) can only wait and hope.

Enter Christian (Johnny Whitworth), a reporter for a local paper who's assigned to look into the case, hopefully to catch the public's interest and the police's attention. His resulting story, based on some local hearsay, does get the cops involved. The overtly racist police chief assigns equally racist Detective Spaulding (Jeremy Holm) and his partner Evans (Danny Johnson) to dig deeper.

Things fall apart quickly, leading to another tragedy. Christian wants to make matters right. Spaulding has a crisis of conscience. It's supposed to matter, but there's still a family in fear and mourning, now with the additional guilt of what other people did in their child's name.

The movie raises all of these issues, but when it comes time to do anything with them, Feier and Gutter offer little in terms of observation and nothing in terms of confronting the various problems being addressed. Christian goes back to chasing rumors. The racist cop, who thinks he might have gone too far, keeps up his attitudes and behavior (If this is him reformed, just imagine him at his worst). The family keeps grieving, and they become a tertiary thought in the filmmakers' minds.

Solving the mystery becomes the screenplay's primary focus. In the process, one starts to wonder if the filmmakers are rationalizing, excusing, or even justifying some of the errors of action and failings of character that some of these characters have done and possess. There's an answer to the mystery of Still Here, but the deeper questions remain unanswered and mostly unexamined.

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